


^ 



PR 4331 
.C3 
1892 
Copy 1 



No. lO.^iCo./^ V 



i^ 






maynard's 
English-Classic-Series 






I— i-i-i 






wnESSAYon 

BURNS 



BY 



L 



Thomas Carlyle. 



33 






I— I-I-I 



NEW YORK 

Maynard^ Merrill 6c Co. 

43,45 d: 47 East lOIiJ St. 



%j r j wj w jw^ m r ^j i ^.wuj n. 



^^ r^ r^r^'^^ r^ ^^ »-^%>^ym^-m:%^»:x- wv"^Nr^v 



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ENGLISH CLASSIC SERIES, 

roR 

Classes in English Literature, Beading, Grammar, etc. 

EDITED BY EMINENT ENGLISH AND AMERICAN SCHOLARS, 

Volume contains a Sketch of the Author^s Life^ Prefatory and 
Explanatory Notes, etc., etc. 



1 Byron's Prophecy of Dante. 

(Cantos I. and II.) 

2 Milton's L.' Allegro, and II Pen- 

seroso. 

3 Lord Bacon's £ssays. Civil and 

Moral. (Selected.) 

4 Byron's Prisoner of Chillon. 

5 Moore's Fire "Worshippers. 

(Lalla Kookh. Selected.) 

6 Goldsmith's Deserted Village. 

7 Scott's Marinion. (Selections 

from Canto VI.) 

8 Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel. 

(Introduction and Canto I.) 

9 Burns'sCotter'sSaturdayNight, 

and other Poems 

10 Crabbe's The Village. 

11 Campbell^s Pleasures of Hope. 

(Abridgment of Parti.) 
13 Macaulay's Essay on Bunyan's 
Pilgrim's Progress. 

13 Macaulay's Armada* and other 

Poems. 

14 Shakespeare's Merchant of Ve- 

nice. (Selections from Acts I., 
III., and IV.) 

15 Goldsmith's Traveller. 

16 Hogg's Queen's Wake, andKil- 

meny. 

17 Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. 

18 Addison's Sir Roger de Cover- 

ley. 

19 Gray's Elegy in a Country 

Churchyard. 

30 Scott'sLady ofthe Lake. (Canto 

I.) 

31 Shakespeare's As You Like It, 

etc. (Selections.) 

33 Shakespeare's King John, and 

Richard II. (Selections.) 
23 Shakespeare's Henry IV., Hen- 
ry v., Henry VI. (Selections.) 

34 Shakespeare's Henry VIII., and 

Julius Caesar. (Selections.) 

35 Wordsworth's Excursion. (Bk.I.) 

36 Pope's Essay on Criticism. 

37 Spenser'sFaerieQueene. (Cantos 

I. and n.) 

38 Cowper's Task. (Book I.) 

39 Milton's Comus. 

30 Tennyson's Enoch Arden, The 
Lotus Eaters, Ulysses, and 
Tithonus. 



31 Irving's Sketch Book. (Selec- 
tions.) 

33 Dickens's Christmas Carol. 
(Condensed.) 

33 Carlyle's Hero as a Prophet. 

34 Macaulay's Warren Hastings. 

(Condensed.) 

35 Goldsmith's Vicar of Wake- 

field. (Condensed.) 

36 Tennyson's The Two Voices, 

and A Dream of Fair Women. 

37 Memory Quotations. 

38 Cavalier Poets. 

39 Dryden's Alexander's Feast, 

and MacFlecknoe. 

40 Keats's The Eve of St. Agnes. 

41 Irving.'s Legend of Sleepy Hol- 

low. 
43 Lamb's Tales from Shake- 
speare. 

43 Le Row's How to Teach Read- 

ing. 

44 Webster's Bunker Hill Ora- 

tions. 

45 The Academy Orthoiipist. A 

Manual of Pronunciation. 

46 Milton's Lycidas, and Hymn 

on the Nativity. 

47 Bryant's Thanatopsis, and other 

Poems. 

48 Ruskin's Modern Painters. 

(Selections.) 

49 The Shakespeare Speaker. 

50 Thackeray's Roundabout Pa- 

pers. 

51 Webster's Oration on Adams 

and Jefferson. 
53 Brown's Rah and his Friends. 

53 Morris's Life and Death of 

Jason. 

54 Burke's Speech OD American 

Taxation. 

55 Pope's Rape of the Lock. 

56 Tennyson's Elaine. 

57 Tennyson's In Memoriam. 

58 Church's Story of the .^n eld. 

59 Church's Story of the Iliad. 

60 Swift's Gulliver's Voyage to 

Lilliput. 

61 Macaulay's Essay on Lord Ba- 

con. (Condensed.) 
63 The Alcestis of Euripides. Eng- 
lish Version by Rev. R. Potter.M. A. 



(Additional numbers on next page.) 



ENGLISH CLASSIC SERIES-No. 70. 



An Essay on Burns. 



BY 



THOMAS CARLYILE. J 



\s. 



/^^'^ 




'J' 



Thomas Carlyle. 



WS^ix^ an Knttolruction anir Kotes 
By J. W. Abeenethy, Ph.D., 

PROFESSOR OF ENGUSH LITERATURE IN THE ADELPHI ACADEMY, BROOKLYN. 



NEW YORK : 

Maynard, Merrill, & Co., Publishers, 
43, 45, AND 47 East Tenth Street. 

New Series, No. 81. October 10, 1892. Pulilislied Semi-weekly. Subscription Price $10. 
Eutered at Post Office, New York, as Second-class Matter. 



t^ 






A Complete Course in^the Study of English. 



spelling. Language, Grammar, Composition, Literature. 



Reed's Word Lessons— A Complete Speller. 
Reed's Introductory Language Work. 

Reed & Kellogg's Graded Lessons in English. 
Reed & Kellogg's Higher Lessons in English. 

Reed & Kellogg's One-Book Course in English. 
Kellogg & Reed's Word Building. 

Kellogg & Reed's The Engjish Language. 
Kellogg's Text-Book on Rhetoric. 
Kellogg's Illustrations of Style. 

Kellogg's Text-Book on English Literature. 



In the preparation of this series the authors have had one object 
clearly in view — to so develop the study of the 'English language as 
to present a complete, progressive course, from the Spelling-Bpbk to 
the study, of English Literature. The trouble«ortie contradictions 
which arise in using books arranged "by different authors on these 
subjects, and which require much time for explanation in- thie ^^'ool- 
room, will be avoided by the use of the above " Complete Coutse." 

Teachers are earnestly invited to examine these books. 

MaynARD, Merrill, & Ca, Publishers, • 

43, 45, and 47 East Tenth St., New York. 



Copyright, 18S9, by Effingham Maynard & Co. 
P. 

^.W.BduimuUer 
t,F'03 



Introduction}'. 

Thomas Carlyle, the " Seer of Chelsea " and the " Censor of 
the Age," was born at Ecclefechau, near Annan, Scotland, in 
1795. His father was a stone-mason and small farmer ; his mother 
learned late in life to use a pen, that she might write to her son 
Thomas. His genius, like that of Burns, of whom he wrote with 
such sympathetic insight, sprang directly from the cold Scotch 
soil. At fourteen he entered the University of Edinburgh, but 
left after completing the ordinary course without taking a degree, 
owing to the University nothing, as he said bitterly, except the 
opportunity afforded by its library for multifarious reading. He 
distinguished himself, however, in the higher mathematics, and 
one of his first published works w^as a translation of " Legendre's 
Geometry." He engaged in teaching, but soon came to "the 
grim conclusion that school-mastering must end, whatever 
pleased to follow." He next studied divinity for a time, as it 
was the wish of his parents that he should enter the ministry; 
but finally declared boldly for literature as his profession, and 
began his career as an author, in 1824, with a " Life of Schiller" 
and an admirable translation of Goethe's " WilhelmMeister." 

In 1826 Carlyle married Jane Welsh, a lineal descendant from 
John Knox, and soon after went to reside upon her small estate 
of Craigenputtock, near Dumfries. Here in this " loneliest nook 
in Britain," as he described it, " in a wilderness of heath and 
rock," these wedded students— for his wife's intellectual gifts 
were comparable with his own— spent about six years, like 
Wordsworth and his sister, in " plain living and high thinking." 
Here he wrote the best of his critical essays, and also the remark- 
able work, " Sartor Resartus," a kind of spiritual biography of 
himself, presenting the main features of his subsequent teaching, 
which first appeared in book f orni in America, in 1836, with an 
Introduction by Emerson. He removed to London in 1834, 
and fixed his final home in Chelsea. His masterpiece, the 
"French Revolution," was published in 1837. " Chartism," a 



4: INTKODUCTIOiq". 

criticism upou the social conditiou of England, appeared in 1839; 
"Heroes and Hero- Worship," in 1841 ; " Past and Present," in 
1843; "Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches," in 1845 ; and 
"Latter-Day Pamphlets," in 1850, a series of violent diatribes 
upon social questions, which at the time brought the author more 
credit for madness than for wisdom. The charming " Life of 
John Sterling" appeared in 1851, followed by his most elabo- 
rate historical work, the "Life of Frederick the Great," from 
1858 to 1865. In 1866 he was elected Lord Rector of Edinburgh 
University, and his Installation Address was attended by the 
most enthusiastic public manifestations of approval and honor. 
His last work was the " Early Kings of Norway," published in 
1875. He died February 5, 1881. 

Carlyle's personal character was remarkable for its inflexible 
integrity and lofty independence. " No praise can be deemed too 
high for the resolute devotion with which, through evil report 
and good report, through poverty and riches, through obscurity 
and fame, he remained constantly honest to his convictions ; re- 
solved to write on no subject which he had not studied to the 
bottom, and determined to speak out what he believed to be the 
truth, however unpalatable it might be to the world."/! He was 
a profound thinker, but not a clear reasoner ; he had too much 
of the fire of the poet to engage in dull analysis and matter-of- 
fact reasoning. '\He felt deeply, but not calmly; the activity of 
his nature, moral and intellectual, was tumultuous. He was a 
moralist rather than a philosopher. His ethical creed was a 
stern, uncompromising insistence upon the performance of duty 
as the chief end of life. /) Men must not labor in hope of reward, 
but must recognize that they deserve nothing. The theory of 
life that makes happiness an end is false and contemptible. 
" Would in this world of ours is as mere zero to should.'^' Of 
specific duties, the first and greatest is work. "Do thy "little 
stroke of work ; this is Nature's voice, and the sum of all the 
commandments, to each luan." " Produce ! Produce ! Were 
it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce 
it in God's name." The " Captains of Industry" are the only 
true aristocrats. Two men are to be honored, and no third, 
•'the toil-worn Craftsman who conquers the earth, and he who 
is seen toiling for the spiritually indispensable." The second 
great duty is that of obedience. "Obedience is our universal 
duty and destiny; wherein whoso will not bend must break." 
The third great duty is veracity, or sincerity, as opposed to all 



IKTRODUCTION". 5 

cant, puffery, quackery, and sliam. The greatest evils in life 
to be battled against are idleness, imposture-, and unveracity. 
"Quack-ridden; in that one word lies all misery whatsoever. 
Speciosit}'- in all departments usurps the place of reality." This 
is a literary duty also. A chief merit of Burns, he says, is his 
" indisputable air of reality." 

** Carlyle's essays," says Professor Nicoll, "are among the 
most valuable of his writings. He was the first to make the 
great writers of Germany known in England ; and his writings 
on the more illustrious figures of the epoch of the French Revolu- 
tion — Voltaire, Diderot, IVIirabeau — are models of insight into 
character, profound and discriminating estimates of men who had 
proved stumbling-blocks to British critics. The essays on Burns 
and Johnson may be said to have struck the keynote of all suc- 
ceeding Avritings on these men; while his criticism of Scott, 
which has provoked a good deal of hostility, is more and more 
coming to be generally recognized as substantially correct. 
The ' Life of Schiller,' though warmly praised by Goethe, who 
added a preface to the German translation of it, is not a first-rate 
performance. But the ' Life of Sterling' is a perfect triumph 
of literary art, far and away the best biography of its size in the 
language." 

Of his literary qualities James Russell Lowell says: " The great 
merit of the essays lay in a criticism based on wide and various 
study, which, careless of tradition, applied its standard to the 
real and not the contemporary worth of the literary or other per- 
formance to be judged, and in an unerring eye for that fleeting 
expression of the moral features of character, a perception of 
which alone makes the drawing of a coherent likeness possible. 
Their defect was a tendency, gaining strength with years, to con- 
found the moral with the aesthetic standard, and to make the 
value of an author's work dependent on the general force of his 
nature rather than on its special fitness for a given task. But, 
with all deductions, he remains the profoundest critic and the 
most dramatic imagination of modern times. His manner is not 
so well suited to the historian as to the essayist. He is always 
great in single figures and striking episodes, but there is neither 
gradation nor continuity. He sees history, as it were, by flashes 
of lightning. He makes us acquainted with the isolated spot 
where we happen to be when the flash comes, as if by actual eye- 
sight, but there is no possibility of a comprehensive view. No 
other writer compares with him for vividness. With the gift of 



^ 



6 INTRODUCTION. 

song, Carlyle would have been the greatest of epic poets since 
Homer. " 

Of the influence of Carlyle's writings Mr. Lowell says: 
*' Though not the safest of guides in politics or practical phi- 
losophy, his value as an inspirer and awaken er cannot be over- 
estimated.'. It is a power which belongs only to the highest order 
of minds, for it is none but a divine fire that can so kindle and 
irradiate. The debt due him from those who listened to the 
teachings of his prime for revealing to them what sublime re- 
serves of power even the humblest may find in manliness, sin- 
cerity, and self-reliance, can be paid with nothing short of rever- 
ential gratitude. As a purifier of the sources whence our intel- 
lectual irjspiration is drawn, his influence has been second only 
to th*^t of Wordsworth, if even to his." 



BURNS. 



In the modern arrangements of society, it is no uncommon 
thing that a man of genius must, like Butler,^ " ask for bread 
and receive a stone ;" for, in spite of our grand maxim of sup- 
ply and demand, it is by no means the highest excellence that 
men are most forward to recognize. The inventor of a spin- 
ning-jenny'^ is pretty sure of his reward in his own day ; but the 
writer of a true poem, like the apostle of a true religion, is 
nearly as sure of the contrary. We do not know whether it is 
not an aggravation of the injustice, that there is generally a 
posthumous retributionx Robert Burns, in the course of Na- 
ture, might yet have been living ; but his short life was spent 
in toil and penury ; and he died, in the prime of his manhood,^ 
miserable and neglected : and yet already a brave mausoleum* 
shines over his dust, and more than one splendid monument 
has been reared in other places to his fame ; the street where 
he languished in poverty is called by his name ; the highest 
personages in our literature have been proud to appear as his 
commentators and admirers ; and here is the sixth narrative 
of his Life that has been given to the world ! 

1. Samuel Butler (1612-1680): The author of "Hudibras," a witty satire 
upon the Puritans. Praised for a time by Charles and his courtiers, he was 
permitted to die in poverty and neglect. He was '* the glory and the scandal 
of the age," says Oldham. 

2. Spinning-jenuy: A machine for spinning wool or cotton, invented in 
1767 by James Hargreaves, an illiterate weaver of Lancashire. 

3. Prime of his Manhood: Burns died at Dumfries, July 21, 1796, in his 
thii'ty-seventh year. 

4. Brave Mau.soleiim : This " huge, cumbrous, unsightly mausoleum," 
as Prof. Shairp describes it, is in the comer of St. Michael's churchyard, 
Dumfries. It literally " shines," with its absurd tin-covered dome. The 
Burns Monument at Edinburgh is one of the most conspicuous objects in the 
city. Another " splendid monument " now stands near the poet's birthplace 
at Ayr, by the side of the " Auld Brig o' Doon." 

7 



8 BURNS. 

Mr. Loekhart^ thinks it necessary to apologize for this new 
attempt on such a subject : but his readers, we believe, will 
readily acquit him ; or, at worst, will censure only the perform- 
ance of his task, not the choice of it. The character of Burns, 
indeed, is a theme that cannot easily become either trite or ex- 
hausted ; and will probably gain rather than lose in its dimen- 
sions by the distance to which it is removed by Time. No 
man, it has been said, is a hero to his valet ; and this is prob- 
ably true ; but the fault is at least as likely to be the valet's as 
the hero's. \\ For it is certain, that to the vulgar eye few things 
are wonderful that are not distant.\^ It is difficult for men to 
believe that the man, the mere man whom they see, nay per- 
haps painfully feel, toiling at their side through the poor jost- 
lings of existence, can be made of finer clay than themselvesij/ 
Suppose that some dining acquaintance of Sir Thomas Lucy's^ 
and neighbor of John-a-Combe's,'' had snatched an hour or 
two from the preservation of his game, and written us a Life 
of Shakspeare ! What dissertations should we not have had, 
— not on Hamlet and The Tempest, but on the wool- trade, and 
deer-stealing, and the libel and vagrant laws ; and how the 
Poacher became a Player ; and how Sir Thomas and Mr. John 
had Christian bowels, and did not push him to extremities ! 
In like manner, we believe, with respect to Burns, that till the 
companions of his pilgrimage, the Honorable Excise Commis- 
sioners, and the Gentlemen of the Caledonian Hunt,^ and the 
Dumfries Aristocracy, and all the Squires and Earls, equally 
with the Ayr Writers, and the New and Old Light Clergy,^ 

5. Joliii Gibson Lockliart : The son-in-law and biographer of V^alter 
Seott. Carlyle's essay first appeared in the Edinburgh Eevieiv, in 1828, as a 
review of Lockhart's "Life of Robert Burns." 

6. Sir Thomas Lucy : The proprietor of Charleeote Hall, near Stratford- 
on-Avon, in whose deer-parl^:, according to the legend, Shakspeare was 
caught poaching. Having been arraigned before Sir Thomas, the young 
poacher, it is said, avenged himself by composing a satirical ballad upon the 
knight, and then fled to London to escape further prosecution. 

7. Jolin-a-Combe: A distinguished citizen of Stratford, the supposed 
subject of some satirical verses attributed to Shakspeai'e. His handsome 
tomb is near Shakspeare's grave, in Stratford Church. 

8. Caledonian Hunt: An association composed of the chiefs of the 
northern aristocracy. Bums dedicated the first Edinburgh edition of his 
poems " To the noblemen and gentlemen of the Caledonian Hunt." 

9. New and Old Light Clergy: The church was divided into two hostile 
theological parties, the " New Lights," holding liberal or rationalistic views, 
ft»d the *' Auld Lights," the strict Calvinists. Burns engaged heartily in the 



BURNS. 9 

whom he had to do with, shall have become invisible in the 
darkness of the Past, or visible only by light borrowed from 
Ms juxtaposition, it will be difficult to measure him by any 
true standard, or to estimate what he really was and did, in 
the eighteenth century, for his country and the world. It will 
be difficult, we say ; but still a fair problem for literary his- 
torians ; and repeated attempts will give us repeated approxi- 
mations. 

His former Biographers have done something, no doubt, 
but by no means a great deal, to assist us. Dr. Currie'" and 
Mr. Walker," the principal of these writers, have both, we 
think, mistaken one essentially important thing: Their own and ' J4 
the world's true relation to their author, and the style in which ^<y\, 
it became such men to think and to speak of such a man. Dr. ^^"/^ 
Currie loved the poet truly ; more perhaps than he avowed to " -■ 
his readers, or even to himself ; yet he everywhere introduces 
him with a certain patronizing, apologetic air ; as if the polite 
public might think it strange and half unwarrantable that he, 
a man of science, a scholar and gentleman, should do such 
honor to a rustic. In all this, however, we readily admit that 
his fault was not want of love, but weakness of faith ; and re- 
gret that the first and kindest of all our poet's biographers 
should not have seen farther, or believed more boldly what he 
saw. Mr. Walker oifends more deeply in the same kind : and 
both err alike in presenting us with a detached catalogue of 
his several supposed attributes, virtues and vices, instead of a 
delineation of the resulting character as a living unity. This, 
however, is not painting a portrait ; but gauging the length 
and breadth of the several features, and jotting down their 
dimensions in arithmetical ciphers. Nay it is not so much as 
that : for we are yet to learn by what arts or instruments the 
mind could be so measured and gauged. 



fight, on the liberal side, satirizing the Auld Lights in the *'Twa Herds," 
" Holy Willie's Prayer." and the " Holy Fair." 

10. James Currie: A Scotch physician, best known for his valuable edi- 
tion of Burns's Works, which he undertook for the benefit of the poet's widow 
and children, published in 1800. 

11. Mr. Walker: Josiah Walker, whose memoir of Bums was prefixed to 
a collection of his poems published in 1811. 



10 BURKS. 

Mr. Lockhart, we are happy to say, has avoided both these 
errors. He uniformly treats Burns as the high and remarkable 
man the public voice has now pronounced him to be : and in 
delineating him, he has avoided the method of separate gener- 
alities, and rather sought for characteristic incidents, habits, 
actions, sayings ; in a word, for aspects which exhibit the 
whole man, as he looked and lived among his fellows. The 
book accordingly, with all its deficiencies, gives more insight, 
we think, into the true character of Burns, than any prior bi- 
ography : though, being written on the very popular and con- 
densed scheme of an article for Constable's Miscellany^ '^ it has 
less depth than we could have wished and expected from a 
writer of such power ; and contains rather more, and more 
multifarious, quotations than belong of right to an original 
production. Indeed, Mr. Lockhart's own writing is generally 
so good, so clear, direct and nervous, ;that we seldom wish to 
see it making place for another man's. However, the spirit 
of the work is throughout candid, tolerant and anxiously con- 
ciliating ; compliments and praises are liberally distributed, 
on all hands, to great and small ; and, as Mr. Morris Birk- 
beck'' observes of the society in the backwoods of America, 
" the courtesies of polite life are never lost sight of for a mo- 
ment." But there are better things than these in the] volume ; 
and we can safely testify, not only that it is easily and pleas- 
antly read a first time, but may even be without difficulty read 
again. 

Nevertheless, we are far from thinking that the problem of 
Burns's Biography has yet been adequately solved. We do not 
allude so much to deficiency of facts or documents, — though 
of these we are still every day receiving some fresh accession, 
— as to the limited and imperfect application of them to the 
great end of Biography. Our notions upon this subject may 
perhaps appear extravagant ; but if an individual is really of 
consequence enough to have his life and character recorded for 



12. Constable's Miscellany: A series of popular works issued by Con- 
stable, the famous Edinburgh publisher who involved Scott in financial ruin. 

13. Mr. Morris liirkbeck: The author of " Notes on a Journey in Amer- 
ica," published in 1818. 



BURIES. 11 

public remembrance, we have always been of opinion that 
the public ought to be made acquainted with all the inward 
springs and relations of his character. ; How did the world 
and man's life, from his particular position, represent them- 
selves to his mind ? How did coexisting circumstances modify 
him from without ; how did he modify these from within ? 
With what endeavors and what efficacy rule over them ; with 
what resistance and what suffering sink under them ? In one 
word, what and how produced was the effect of society on 
him ; what and how produced was his effect on society ? He 
who should answer these questions, in regard to any individ- 
ual, would, as we believe, furnish a model of perfection in 
Biography. Few individuals, indeed, can deserve such a 
study ; and many lives will be written, and, for the gratifica- 
tion of innocent curiosity, ought to be written, and read and 
forgotten, which are not in this sense biographies. But 
Burns, if we mistake not, is one of these few individuals ; and 
such a study, at least with such a result, he has not yet ob- 
tained. Our own contributions to it, we are aware, can be but 
scanty and feeble ; but we offer them with good- will, and 
trust they may meet with acceptance from those they are in- 
tended for. ' 

Burns first came upon the world as a prodigy ; and was, in 
that character, entertained by it, in the usual fashion, with 
loud, vague, tumultuous wonder, speedily subsiding into cen- 
sure and neglect ; till his early and most mournful death again 
awakened an enthusiasm for him, which, especially as there 
was now nothing to be done, and much to be spoken, has pro- 
longed itself even to our own time. It is true, the "nine 
days " ^* have long since elapsed ; and the very_ continuance of 
this clamor proves that Burns was no Vulgar wonder. Ac- 
cordingly, even in sober judgments, where, as years passed by, 
he has come to rest more and more exclusively on his own in- 
trinsic merits, and may now be Avell-nigh shorn of that casual 



14. Nine <la.vs: An allusion to the popular phrase " nine days' wonder," 
wh''ch is thought to have originated in srnue reference to the nine days dur- 
ing which Lady Jane Grey was Queen of England. 



12 BUKKS. 

radiance, he appears not only as a true British poet, but as 
one of the most considerable British meii of the eighteenth 
cgiitoiry. Let it not be objected that he did little.J He did 
much, if we consider where and how. If the work performed 
was small, we must remember that he had his very materials to 
discover ; for the metal he worked in lay hid under the desert 
moor, where no eye but his had guessed its existence ; and we 
may almost say, that with his own hand he had to construct 
the tools for fashioning it. For he found himself in deepest 
obscurity, without help, without instruction, without model ; 
or with models only of the meanest sort, j An educated man 
stands, as it were, in the midst of a boundless arsenal and 
magazine, filled with all the weapons and engines which man's 
skill has been able to devise from the earliest time ; and he 
works, accordingly, with a strength borrowed from all past 
ages. How different is his state who stands on the outside of 
that storehouse, and feels that its gates must be stormed, or 
remain forever shut against him ! His means are the com- 
monest and rudest ; the mere work done is no measure of his 
strength. A dwarf behind his steam-engine may remove 
mountains ; but no dwarf will hew them down with a pickaxe; 
and he must be a Titan' ^ that hurls them abroad with his 
arms. 

It is in this last shape that Burns presents himself. Born 
in an age the most prosaic Britain had yet seen, and in a com- 
dition the most disadvantageous, where his mind, if it accom- 
plished aught, must accomplish it under the pressure of con- 
tinual bodily toil, nay of penury and desponding apprehension 
of the worst evils, and with no furtherance but such knowl- 
edge as dwells in a poor man's hut, and the rhymes of a Fer- 
guson'^ or Kamsay'^ for his standard of beauty, he sinks not 



15. Titan: The Titans were fabled giants, sons and daughters of Uranus 
(Heaven) and Gaea (Earth) During their rebellion against Zeus they piled 
Mount Ossa upon Moimt Pelion,in order to scale the walls of heaven. 

16 Robert Ferguson (1750-1774): A Scottish poet whom Burns greatly- 
admired, and called his " elder brother in the muses." The monument over 
his grave in Edinburgh was' erected by Burns. 

17 Allan Kamsay (1GN5-1758): A Scottish poet, "at whose lamp Burns 
lighted his brilliant torch," says Scott. He reawakened in Scotland an mter- 
est in the native poetry. 



BURNS. 13 

under all these impediments : through the fogs and darkness 
of that obscure region, his lynx eye discerns the true relations, 
of the world and human life ; he grows into intellectual 
strength, and trains himself into intellectual expertness. Im- 
pelled by the expansive movement of his own irrepressible 
soul, he struggles forward into the general view; and with 
haughty modesty lays down before us, as the fruit of his la- 
bor, a gift, which Time has now pronounced imperishable. 
Add to all this, that his darksome drudging childhood and 
youth was by far the kindliest era of his whole life; and that 
he died in his thirty-seventh year: and then ask, If it be 
strange that his poems are imperfect, and of small extent, or 
that his genius attained no mastery in its art ? /' Alas, his Sun 
shone as through a tropical tornado; and the pale Shadow of 
Death eclipsed it at noon ! ' Shrouded in such baleful vapors, 
the genius of Burns was never seen, in clear azure splendor, 
enlightening the world: but some beams from it did, by fits, 
pierce through; and it tinted those clouds with rainbow and 
orient colors, into a glory and stern grandeur, which men 
silently gazed on with wonder and tears ! 
vL^We are anxious not to exaggerate; for it is exposition rather 
'than admiration that our readers require of us here; and yet 
to avoid some tendency to that side is no easy matter. We 
love Burns, and we pity him; and love and pity are prone to 
magnify. " Criticism, it is sometimes thought, should be a cold 
business; we are not so sure of this; but, at all events, our 
concern with Burns is not exclusively that of critics. True 
and genial as his poetry must appear, it is not chiefly as a poet, 
but as a man, that he interests and affects us. He was often 
advised to write a tragedy: time and means were not lent him 
for this; but through life he enacted a tragedy, and one of the 
deepest. We question whether the world has since witnessed 
so utterly sad a scene; whether Napoleon himself, left to brawl 
with Sir Hudson Lowe'^ and perish on his rock, "amid the 
melancholy main," presented to the reflecting mind such a 

18. Sir Hudson L.owe: A British g:eneral, made governor of the island of 
St. Helena, when Napoleon was sent there as an exile in 1815. He was much 
censured for his harsh treatment of the distinguished captive. 



14 BURKS. 

"spectacle of pity and fear" as did this intrinsically nobler, 
gentler and perhaps greater soul, wasting itself away in a 
hopeless struggle with base entanglements, which coiled closer 
and closer round him, till only death opened him an outlet. 
Conquerors are a class of men with whom, formostj mrt, th e 
world~c ould well disp ense; nor"can the hard intellect, the un- 
sympathizing loftiness and high but selfish enthusiasm of such 
persons inspire us in general with any affection; at best it 
may excite amazement; and their fall, like that of a pyramid, 
will be beheld with a certain sadness and awe. \ But a true 
Poet, a man in whose heart resides some effluence of Wisdom, 
some tone of the "Eternal Melodies," is the most precious gilt 
that can be bestowed on a generation :|' we see in him a freer, 
purer development of whatever is noblest in ourselves; his life 
is a rich lesson to us; and we mourn his death as that of a 
benefactor who loved and taught us. 

Such a gift had Nature, in her bounty, bestowed on us in 
Kobert Burns; but with queenlike indifference she cast it from 
her hand, like a thing of no moment; and it was defaced and 
torn asunder, as an idle bauble, before we recognized it. To 
the ill-starred Burns was given the power of making man's 
life more venerable, but] that of wisely guiding his own life 
was not given. \ Destiny, — for so in our ignorance we must 
speak, — his faults, the faults of others, proved too hard for 
him; and that spirit, which might have soared could it but 
have walked, soon sank to the dust, its glorious faculties trod- 
den under foot in the blossom; and died, we may almost say, 
without ever having lived. And so kind and warm a soul; so 
full of inborn riches, of love to all living and lifeless things ! 
How his heart flows out in sympathy over universal Nature; 
and in her bleakest provinces discerns a beauty and a meaning! 
The "Daisy" falls not unheeded under his plowshare; nor 
the ruined nest of that " wee, cowering, timorous beastie," cast 
forth, after all its provident pains, to "thole the sleety dribble 
and cranreuch cauld. " '^ The ' ' hoar visage " of winter delights 
him; he dwells with a sad and oft-returning fondness in these 

19. " To endure the sleety drizzle and hoarfrost cold." From " To a Mouse," 



^ 



BURNS. 15 

scenes of solemn desolation; but the voice of the tempest be- 
comes an anthem to his ears; he loves to walk in the sound- 
ing woods, for ' ' it raises his thoughts to Him that walketh 
on the wings of the wind. '//A true Poet-soul, for it needs but 
to be struck, and the sound it yields will be music \jj But ob- 
serve him chiefly as he mingles with his brother men. What 
warm, all-comprehending fellow-feeling ; what trustful, bound- 
less love; what generous exaggeration of the object loved ! 
His rustic friend, his nut-brown maiden, are no longer mean 
and homely, but a hero and a queen, whom he prizes as the 
paragons of Earth. The rough scenes of Scottish life, not 
seen by him in any Arcadian illusion,''" but in the rude contra- 
diction, in the smoke and soil of a too harsh reality, are still 
lovely to him: Poverty is indeed his companion, but Love also, 
and Courage; the simple feelings, the worth, the nobleness, 
that dwell under the straw roof, are dear and venerable to his 
heart: and thus over the lowest provinces of man's existence 
he pours the glory of his own soul; and they rise, in shadow 
and sunshine, softened and brightened into a beauty which 
other eyes discern not in the highest. He has a just self-con- 
sciousness, which too often degenerates into pride; yet it is a 
noble pride, for defense, not for offense; no cold suspicious 
feeling, but a frank and social one. The Peasant Poet bears 
himself, we might say, like a King in exile: he is cast among 
the low, and feels himself equal to the highest; yet he claims 
no rank, that none may be disputed to him. The forward he 
can repel, the supercilious he can subdue; pretensions of 
wealth or ancestry are of no avail with him; there is a fire in 
that dark eye, under which the " insolence of condescension '' 
cannot thrive. In his abasement, in his extreme need, he for- 
gets not for a moment the majesty of Poetry and Manhood, 
And yet, far as he feels himself above common men, he waur 
ders not apart from them, but mixes warmly in their interests; 
nay throws himself into their arms, and, as it were, entreats 
them to lo^z-e him. It is moving to see how, in his darkest 

20. Arcadian illusion: Arcadia, in the center of the Peloponnesus, has 
been made by the Poets the ideal home of pastoral simplicity, peace, an^ 
bappiness, ... - 



16 BURN^S. 

despondency, this proud being still seeks relief from friend- 
ship;; unbosoms himself, often to the unworthy ;\and, amid 
tears, strains to his glowing heart a heart that knows only the 
name of friendship. And yet he was "quick to learn;" a man 
of keen vision, before whom common disguises afforded no 
concealment. His understanding saw through the hoUowness 
even of accomplished deceivers; but there was a generous 
credulity in his heart. And so did our Peasant show himself 
among us; "a soul like an ^olian harp,"^^ in whose strings the 
vulgar wind, as it passed through them, changed itself into 
articulate melody." And this was he for whom the world 
found no fitter business than quarrelling with smugglers and 
vintners, computing excise-dues upon tallow, and gauging ale- 
barrels ! In such toils was that mighty Spirit sorrowfully 
wasted: and a hundred years may pass on, before another 
such is given us to waste. 

All that remains of Burns, the Writings he has left, seem to 
US, as "we hinted above, no more than a poor mutilated frac- 
tion of what was in him; brief, broken glimpses of a genius 
that could never show itself complete; that wanted all things 
for completeness : culture, leisure, true effort, nay even length 
of life. His poems are, with scarcely any exception, mere oc- 
casional effusions ; poured forth with little premeditation; ex- 
pressing, by such means as offered, the passion, opinion, or 
humor of the hour. Never in one instance was it permitted 
him to grapple with any subject with the full collection of his 
strength, to fuse and mold it in the concentrated fire of his 
genius. To try by the strict rules of Art such imperfect frag- 
ments, would be at once unprofitable and unfair. Neverthe- 
less, there is something in these poems, marred and defective 
as they are, which forbids the most fastidious student of poe- 
try to pass them by. Some sort of enduring quality they must 
have : for after fifty years of the wildest vicissitudes in poetic 
taste, they still continue to be read ; nay, are read more and 



21. ^olian harp: The wind harp ; from iEolus, the god of the winds. 
Usually an open box with strings stretched across It, whi<?h, placed in 9 
draught of wind, produces very sweet tones. 



BURNS. 17 

more eagerly, more and more extensively ; and this not only 
by literary virtuosos, and that class upon whom transitory 
causes operate most strongly, but by all classes, down to the 
most hard, unlettered and truly natural class, who read little, 
and especially no poetry, except because they find pleasure in 
it. The grounds of so singular and wide a popularity, which 
extends, in a literal sense, from the palace to the hut, and 
over all regions where the English tongue is spoken, are well 
worth inquiring into. After every just deduction, it seems to 
imply some rare excellence in these works. What is that ex- 
cellence ? 

To answer this question will not lead us far. The excellence 
of Burns is, indeed, among the rarest, whether in poetry or 
prose ; but, at the same time, it is plain and easily recognized : 
hi^Si7iceriti/, his indisputable air of Truth. Here are no 
fabulous woes or joys ; no hollow fantastic sentimentalities ; no 
wiredrawn reflnings, either in thought or feeling : the passion 
that is traced before us has glowed in a living heart ; the 
opinion he utters has risen in his own understanding, and 
been a light to his own steps. He does not write from hear- 
say, but from sight and experience ; it is the scenes that he 
has lived and labored amidst, that he describes: those scenes, 
rude and humble as they are, have kindled beautiful emotions 
in his soul, noble thoughts, and definite resolves ; and he 
speaks forth what is in him, not from any outward call of 
vanity or interest, but because his heart is too full to be silent. 
He speaks it with such melody and modulation as he can ; " in 
homely rustic jingle ;" but it is his own, and genuine. This 
is the grand secret for finding readers and retaining them : let 
him who would move and convince others, be first moved and 
convinced himself. Horace's rule, Si vis me flere,'^'^ is apjjli- 
cable in a wider sense than the literal one. To every poet, to 
every writer, we might say : Be true, if you would be believed. 
Let a man but speak forth with genuine earnestness the 
thought, the emotion, the actual condition of his own heart ; 
and other men, so strangely are we all knit together by the tie 

22. " Si vis me flere, dolendum est primum ipsi tibi"— If you wish me to 
weep, you must mourn first yourself .—^?-s Foetica, 102, 



18 BURKS. 

of sympathy, must and will give heed to him. In culture, in 
extent of view, we may stand above the speaker, or below 
him ; but in either case, his words, if they are earnest and 
sincere, will find some response within us ; for in spite of all 
casual varieties in outward rank or inward, as face answers to 
face, so does the heart of man to man. 

This may appear a very simple principle, and one which 
Burns had little merit in discovering. True, the discovery is 
easy enough : but the practical appliance is not easy ; is in- 
deed the fundamental difficulty which all poets have to strive 
with, and which scarcely one in the hundred ever fairly sur- 
mounts. A head too dull to discriminate the true from the 
false ; a heart too dull to love the one at all risks, and to hate 
the other in spite of all temptations, are alike fatal to a writer. 
With either, or as more commonly happens, with both of these 
deficiencies combine a love of distinction, a wish to be origi-' 
nal, which is seldom wanting, and we have Affectation, the 
bane of literature, as Cant, its elder brother, is of morals. 
How often does the one and the other front us, in poetry, as 
in life ! Great poets themselves are not always free of this 
vice ; nay, it is precisely on a certain sort and degree of great- 
ness that it is most commonly ingrafted. A strong effort after 
excellence will sometimes solace itself with a mere shadow of 
success ; he who has much to unfold, will sometimes unfold 
it imperfectly. Byron, ^* for instance, was no common man : 
yet if we examine his poetry with this view, we shall find it 
far enough from faultless. Generally speaking, we should say 
that it is not true. He refreshes us, not with the divine foun- 
tain, but too often with vulgar strong waters, stimulating in- 
deed to the taste, but soon ending in dislike, or even nausea. 
Are his Harolds and Giaours, we would ask, real men ; we 
mean, poetically consistent and conceivable men? Do not 



23. I.ord Byron (1788-1824V. The famous poet, whom Matthew Arnold 
couples with Wordsworth as " first and pre-eminent in actual performance, 
a glorious pair, among the English poets of this century." The allusions 
here are to the poems " Childe Harold." "The Giaour," and "Don Juan." 
"In these poems," says Prof. Beers, "there is a single figure— the figure of 
Byron under various masks— and one perv^ading mood, a restless and sar- 
donic gloom, a weariness of life, a love of solitude, and a melancholy exal- 
tation in the presence of the wilderness and the sea." 



BURNS. 19 

these characters, does not the character of their author, which 
more or less shines through them all, rather appear a thing 
put on for the occasion ; no natural or possible mode of being, 
but something intended to look much grander than nature ? 
Surely, all these stormful agonies, this volcanic heroism, 
superhuman contempt and moody desperation, with so much 
scowling, and teeth-gnashing, and other sulphurous humor, is 
more like the brawling of a player in some paltry tragedy, 
which is to last three hours, than the bearing of a man in the 
business of life, which is to last threescore and ten years. To 
our minds there is a taint of this sort, something which we 
should call theatrical, false, affected,^'* in every one of these 
otherwise so powerful pieces. Perhaps Don Juan, especially 
the latter parts of it, is the only thing approaching to a sincere 
work, he ever wrote ; the only work where he showed himself, 
in any measure, as he was ; and seemed so intent on his sub- 
ject as, for moments, to forget himself. Yet Byron hated this 
vice ; we believe, heartily detested it : nay he had declared 
formal war against it in words. So difficult is it even for the 
strongest to make this primary attainment, which might seem 
the simplest of all : to read its own consciousness without 
mistakes, without errors involuntary or willful ! We recollect 
no poet of Burns's susceptibility who comes before us from the 
first, and abides with us to the last, with such a total want of 
affectation. He is an honest man, and an honest writer. In 
his successes and his failures, in his greatness and his little- 
ness, he is ever clear, simple, true, and glitters with no luster 
but his own. We reckon this to be a great virtue ; to be, in 
fact, the root of most other virtues, literary as well as moral. 
Here, however, let us say, it is to the Poetry of Burns that 
we now allude ; to those writings which he had time to medi- 
tate, and where no special reason existed to warp his critical 
feeling, or obstruct his endeavor to fullfil it. Certain of his 



24. Affected : Says Mr. Arnold. " Even of his passionate admirers, how 
many never got beyond the theatrical Byron, from whom they caught the 
fashion of deranging their hair, or of knotting their neck-handkerchief, or of 
leaving their shirt collar unbuttonod; how few profoundly felt his vital in- 
fluence, the influence of his splendid and imperishable "excellence of sin- 
cerity ana strengiu." 



20 BURKS. 

Letters, and other fractions of prose composition, by no means 
deserve this praise. Here, doubtless, there is not the same 
natural truth of style ; but on the contrary, something not 
only stiff, but strained and twisted ; a certain high-flown in- 
flated tone ; the stilting emphasis of which contrasts ill with 
the firmness and rugged simplicity of even his poorest verses. 
Thus no man, it would appear, is altogether unaffected. Does 
not Shakspeare himself sometimes premeditate the sheerest 
bombast ! But even with regard to these Letters of Burns, it 
is but fair to state that he had two excuses. The first was his 
comparative deficiency in language. Burns, though for most 
part he writes with singular force and even gracefulness, is not 
master of English prose, as he is of Scottish verse ; not master 
of it, we mean, in proportion to the depth and vehemence of 
his matter. These Letters strike us as the effort of a man to 
express something which he has no organ fit for expressing. 
But a second and weightier excuse is to be found in the pecu- 
liarity of Burns's social rank. His correspondents are often 
men whose relation to him he has never accurately ascer- 
tained ; whom therefore he is either forearming himself 
against, or else unconsciously flattering, by adopting the style 
he thinks will please them. At all events, we should remem- 
ber that these faults, even in his Letters, are not the rule, but 
the exception. Whenever he writes, as one would ever wish 
to do, to trusted friends and on real interests, his style be- 
comes simple, vigorous, expressive, sometimes even beautiful. 
His letters to Mrs. Dunlop" are uniformly excellent. 

But we return to his Poetry. In addition to its Sincerity, 
it has another peculiar merit, which indeed is but a mode, or 
perhaps a means, of the foregoing : this displays itself in his 
choice of subjects ; or rather in his indifference as to subjects, 
and the power he has of making all subjects interesting. The 
ordinary poet, like the ordinary man, is forever seeking in ex- 
ternal circumstances the help which can be found only in him- 

25. Mrs. Diinlop : His most valued friend and accomplished correspond- 
ent. Happening upon a copy of the first edition of his poems, she was 
charmed with the " Cotter's Saturday Night" and immediately sent an ex- 
press to Burns, fifteen miles away, with a letter of praise and an order for 
several copies of the poems. 



/t^ 



BURKS. 21 

self. In what is familiar and near at hand, he discerns no 
form or comeliness : home is not poetical but prosaic ; it is in 
some past, distant, conventional heroic world, that poetry re- 
sides ; were he there and not here, were he thus and not so, it 
would be well with him. Hence our innumerable host of rose- 
colored Novels and iron -mailed Epics, ^^ with their locality not 
on the Earth, but somewhere nearer to the Moon. Hence our 
Virgins of the Sun, and our Knights of the Cross, malicious 
Saracens in turbans, and copper-colored Chiefs in wampum, 
and so many other truculent figures from the heroic times or 
the heroic climates, who on all hands swarm in our poetry. 
Peace be with them ! But yet, as a great moralist proposed 
preaching to the men of this century, so would we fain preach 
to the poets, "a sermon on the duty of staying at home." Let 
them be sure that heroic ages and heroic climates can do little 
for them. That form of life has attraction for us, less be- 
cause it is better or nobler than our own, than simply because 
it is different ; and even this attraction must be of the most 
transient, sort. For will not our own age, one day be an 
ancient one ; and have as quaint a costume as the rest; not 
contrasted with the rest, therefore, but ranked along with 
them, in respect of quaintness ? Does Homer interest us now, 
because he wrote of what passed beyond his native Greece, and 
two centuries before he was born ; or because he wrote w^hat 
passed in God's world, and in the heart of man, which is the 
same after thirty centuries ? Let our poets look to this : is 
their feeling really finer, truer, and their vision deeper than 
that of other men,— they have nothing to fear, even from the 
humblest subject ; is it not so,— they have nothing to hope, 
but an ephemeral favor, even from the highest. 
V.The poet, we imagine, can never have far to seek for a 
^tibject : the elements of his art are in him, and around him 
on every hand ; for him the Ideal world is not remote from 
the Actual, but under it and within it: nay, he is a poet, pre- 

20. Iron-mailed Epics, Virgins of the Sun, etc.: The prose and 
poetical romances of Scott, Byron. Moore, Southey, and other imaginative 
writers of the period were filled with the romanticism which Carlyle con- 
demns. The world was searched for sensations. 



22 J^UKKS. 

cisely because he can discern it there. Wherever there is a 
sky above him, and a world around him, the poet is in his 
place ; for here too is man's existence, with its infinite long- 
ings and small acquirings ; its ever-thwarted, ever-renewed en- 
deavors ; its unspeakable aspirations, its fears and hopes that 
wander through Eternity ; and all the mystery of brightness 
and of gloom that it was ever made of, in any age or climate, 
since man first began to live. Is there not the fifth act of a 
Tragedy in every death-bed, though it were a peasant's, and a 
bed of heath ? And are wooings and weddings obsolete, that 
there can be Comedy no longer ? Or are men suddenly grown 
wise, that Laughter must no longer shake his sides, but be 
cheated of his Farce ? Man's life and nature is, as it was, and 
as it will ever be. But the poet must have an eye to read these 
things, and a heart to understand them ; or they come and 
pass away before him in vain. He is a vates^'^'' a seer ; a gift 
of vision has been given him. Has life no meanings for him, 
which another cannot equally decipher ; then he is no poet, 
and Delphi ^^ itself will not make him one. 

In this respect, Burns, though not perhaps absolutely a 
great poet, better manifests his capability, better proves the 
truth of his genius, than if he had by his own strength kept 
the whole Minerva Press ^^ going, to the end of his literary 
course. He shows himself at least a poet of Nature's own 
making ; and Nature, after all, is still the grand agent in 
making poets. We often hear of this and the other external 
condition being requisite for the existence of a poet. Some- 
times it is a certain sort of training ; he must have studied 
certain things, studied for instance "the elder dramatists," and 
so learned a poetic language ; as if poetry lay in the tongue, 
not in the heart. At other times we are told he must be bred 
in a certain rank, and must be on a confidential footing with 
the higher classes ; because, above all things, he must see the 

27. Vates: The Latin word for poet; literally, a foreteller, soothsayer. 

28. Delphi: The seat of the famous oracle of Apollo, the god of music and 
poetry, situated at the foot of Mount Parnassus, the home of the Muses. 

29. Minerva Press: A printing establishment famous in London about a 
century ago for its trashy, ultra-sentimental, '* rose-colored " novels, with 
absurd plots laid " somewhere near the moon." 



BURNS. 23 

world. As to seeing the world, we apprehend this will cause 
him little difficulty, if he have but eyesight to see it with. 
Without eyesight, indeed, the task might be hard. The blind 
or the purblind man "travels from Dan to Beersheba^" and 
finds it all barren." But happily every poet is born m the 
world ; and sees it, with or against his will, every day and 
every hour he lives. The mysterious workmanship of man's 
heart, the true light and the inscrutable darkness of man's 
destiny, reveal themselves not only in capital cities and 
crowded saloons, but in every hut and hamlet where men have 
their abode. Nay, do not the elements of all human virtues 
and all human vices ; the passions at once of a Borgia^^ and 
of a Luther, ^^ lie written, in stronger or fainter lines, in the 
consciousness of every individual bosom, that has practiced 
honest self-examination ? Truly, this same world may be seen 
in MossgieP^ and Tarbolton,^* if we look well, as clearly as it 
ever came to light in Crockford's,^^ or the Tuileries itself.^® 

But sometimes still harder requisitions are laid on the poor 
aspirant to poetry ; for it is hinted that he should have heen 
horn two centuries ago ; inasmuch as poetry, about that date, 
vanished from the earth, and became no longer attainable by 
men ! Such cobweb speculations have, now and then, over- 
hung the field of literature ; but they obstruct not the growth 
of any plant there : the Shakspeare or the Burns, uncon- 
sciously and merely as he walks onward, silently brushes them 
away. Is not every genius an impossibility till he appear? 



30. Dan to Beersheba: Dan was the most northern and Beersheba the 
most southern city of the Holy Land. Hence the meaning, from one end of 
the kingdom to the other; everywhere. Like this is the English phrase 
" From John o' Groat's to Land's End." 

31. liorgia: An ItaUan famUy of the fifteenth century, celebrated for its 
monstrous crimes. 

32. Martin Lutber (1483-1546): The great leader of the German Reforma- 
tion. His nature was passionate and violent, and his righteous wrath often 
discharged itself in thunder and lightning against the abuses of Rome. 

.33. Mossgiel: The farm where Burns made his first disastrous experiment 
in farming, and where he wrote much of his iinest poetry. 

34. Tarbolton: A town of Ayrshire where Burns lived, on the farm of 
Lochlea, from his seventeenth to his twenty-fourth year. 

35. Crockfoi'd's: A famous gaming club-house m London, so called from 
the proprietor, opened in 1849. It was for a time the center of fashionable 
gambling, and numbered the Duke of Wellington among its original members. 

3G. Tuileries: A royal palace in Paris, begun in 1564 by Catharine de' 
Medici diU^ finished by Liouis XLY, It was burned by the Communists in 1871. 



24 BURNS. 

Why do we call him new and original, if we saw where his 
marble was lying, and what fabric he could rear from it ? It 
is not the material but the workman that is wanting. It is 
not the dark place that hinders, but the dim eye. A Scottish 
peasant's life was the meanest and rudest of all lives, till 
Burns became a poet in it, and a poet of it ; found it a mail's 
life, and therefore significant to men. A thousand battle- 
fields remain unsung ; but the Woimded Hare has not perished 
without its memorial ; a balm of mercy yet breathes on us 
from its dumb agonies, because a poet was there. Our Hal- 
loween had passed and repassed, in rude awe and laughter, 
since the era of the Druids ;" but no Theocritus,'^ till Burns, 
discerned in it the materials of a Scottish Idyl : neither was 
the Holy Fair any Council of Trent ^^ or Roman Jubilee; *" but 
nevertheless, Superstition and Hypocrisy and Fun having 
been propitious to him, in this man's hand it became a poem, 
instinct with satire and genuine comic life. Let but the true 
poet be given us, we repeat it, place him where and how you 
will, and true poetry will not be wanting. 

Independently of the essential gift of poetic feeling, as we 
have now attempted to describe it, a certain rugged sterling 
worth pervades whatever Burns has written ; a virtue, as of 
green fields and mountain breezes, dwells in his poetry ; it is 
redolent of natural life and hardy natural men. There is a 
decisive strength in him, and yet a sweet native gracefulness : 
he is tender, he is vehement, yet without constraint or too 
visible effort ; he melts the heart, or inflames it, with a power 
which seems habitual and familiar to him. We see that in 
this man there was the gentleness, the trembling pity of a 
woman, with the deep earnestness, the force and passionate 



37. Druids: The religious order of the ancient Britons ; they exercised the 
functions of judge, bard, prophet, and priest. 

38. Theocritus: A Greek poet of Syracuse, flourished about 270 B.C., dis- 
tinguished as the father of pastoral poetry, especially of that form known as 
the " Idyl." 

39. Council of Trent: A celebrated council of the Catholic Church, opened 
in 1545, for the purpose of reconciliation between Protestants and Pope. 
Under the influence of the Jesuits the Creed of the Church was made more 
rigid, and the hope of reconciliation removed forever. 

40. Roman Jubilee: A church celebration at Rome, every twenty-fifth 
year, when extraordinary indulgences are granted to the faithful, 



BUKKS. 25 

ardor of a hero. Tears lie in him, and consuming fire ; as 
lightning lurks in the drops of the summer cloud. He has a 
resonance in his bosom for every note of human feeling ; the 
high and the low, the sad, the ludicrous, the joyful, are wel- 
come in their turns to his "lightly-moved and all-conceiving 
spirit." And observe with what a fierce prompt force he 
grasps his subject, be it what it may ! How he fixes, as it 
were, the full image of the matter in his eye ; full and clear 
in every lineament ; and catches the real type and essence of 
it, amid a thousand accidents and superficial circumstances, 
no one of which misleads him ! Is it of reason ; some truth 
to be discovered? , No sophistry, no vain surface-logic detains 
him ; quick, resolute, unerring, he pierces through into tlie 
marrow of the question ; and speaks his verdict with an em- 
phasis that cannot be forgotten. Is it of description ; some 
visual object to be represented ? No poet of any age or nation 
is more graphic than Burns : the characteristic features dis- 
close themselves to him at a glance ; three lines from his hand, 
and we have a likeness. And, in that rough dialect, in that 
rude, often awkward meter, so clear and definite a likeness ! 
It seems a draughtsman working with a burnt stick.; and yet 
the burin of a Retzsch** is not more expressive or exact. 

Of this last excellence, the plainest and most comprehensive 
of all, being indeed the root and foundation of every sort of 
talent, poetical or intellectual, we could produce innumerable 
instances from the writings of Burns. Take these glimpses of 
a snow-storm from his Winter Night (the italics are ours) ; 

When biting Boreas,^^ feU and doure, 

Sharp shivers thro' the leafless bow'r, 

And Phoebus gies a short-liv'd gloivr 
Far south the lift, 

Dim darkening thro'' the flaky shower 
Or whirling drift: 

'Ae night the storm the steeples rock'd, 
Poor labor sweet in sleep was lock'd, 



41. Moritz Retzscli flTTQ-lSST): A German painter and designer, famous 
for his etchings illustrating Goethe's " Faust." 

42. Boreas: The north wind; doure, stubborn; Phoebus, Apollo, the sim- 
god; gies, etc., gives us a short-lived stare; lift, the sky; ae night, one night; 
burns, etc., streams with snowy wreaths choked up; backed, vomited. 



26 BURNS. 

While burns, wi' snawy tvreeths upcholc'd. 

Wild-eddying swirl. 
Or thro' the mining outlet bock'd 

Down headlong hurl. 

Are there not " descriptive touches" here ? The describer saw 
this thing ; the essential feature and true likeness of every 
circumstance in it ; saw, and not with the eye only. "Poor 
labor locked in sweet sleep ;" the dead stillness of man, un- 
conscious, vanquished, yet not unprotected, while such strife 
of the material elements rages, and seems to reign supreme 
in loneliness : this is of the heart as well as of the eye ! — Look 
also at his image of a thaw, and prophesied fall of the AuM 
Brig:*' 

When heavy, dark, continued, a'-day rains 
Wi' deepening deluges o'erflow the plains; 
When from the hills where springs the brawling Coil, 
Or stately Lugar's mossy fountains boil, 
Or where the Greenock winds his moorland course, 
Or haimted Garpal** draws his feeble source, 
Arous'd by blust'ring winds and spotting thowes, 
In mony a torrent down his snaio-broo roives ; 
WJiile crashing ice, borne on the roaring sjiate, 
Stveeps dams and mills and brigs a' to the gate; 
And from Glenbuck down to the Rattonkey, 
Auld Ayr is just one lengthen'd tumbling sea; 
Then down ye'U hurl, Deil nor ye never rise 1 
And dash the gumlle jaups up to the pouring skies. 

The last line is in itself a Poussin-picture*^ of that Deluge ! 
The welkin has, as it were, bent down with its weight ; the 
"gumlie jaups" and the "pouring skies" are mingled to- 
gether ; it is a world of rain and ruin. — In respect of mere 
clearness and minute fidelity, the Farmer's commendation of 
his Atild Mare, in plow or in cart, may vie with Homer's 
Smithy of the Cyclops, or yoking of Priam's Chariot." Nor 



43. Two bridges cross the Ayr, in the town of Ayr. The erection of the 
New Brig is celebrated in the poem " The Brigs of Ayr." The Auld Brig is still 
used by foot-passengers. 

44. Thowes, thaM's; snaw-broo rowes, melted snow rolls; spate, flood; 
Glenbuck, the source of the river Ayr; Ratton-key, a small landing-place 
near the town; aumlie jaups, muddy splashes. 

45. Poussin-pictiire: Nicolas Poussin (1.594-166.5) was a celebrated French 
painter, called the "Raphael of France," and regarded by Ruskin as "the 
principal master of the classical landscape." 

46. See Homer's Odyssey, Bk. IX., and Iliad, Bk. XXIV. 



BURKS. 27 

have we forgotten stout Burn-tlie-wind and his brawny cus- 
tomers, inspired by Scotch Brink : but it is needless to multi 
ply examples. One other trait of a much finer sort we select 
from multitudes of such among his Sonys. It gives, in a single 
line, to the saddest feeling the saddest environment and local 
habitation : 

Ttie pale Moon is setting beyond the ivhite wave. 
And Time is setting toV me, O ; 
Farewell, false friends ! false lover, farewell ! 
I'll nae mair trouble them nor thee, O. 

This clearness of sight^we have_called the foundation of all 
talent; for in fact, unless we see our object, how shall we 
know how to place or prize it, in our understanding, our im- 
agination, our affections ? Yet it is not in itself, perhaps, a 
very high excellence; but capable of being united indifferently 
with the strongest, or with ordinary power. Homer surpasses 
all men in this quality : but strangely enough, at no great dis- 
tance below him are Richardson^'' and Defoe.** It belongs, in 
truth, to what is called a lively mind ; and gives no sure indi- 
cation of the higher endowments that may exist along with it. 
In all the three cases we have mentioned, it is combined with 
great garrulity; their descriptions are detailed, ample and lov- 
ingly exact; Homer's fire bursts through, from time to time, 
as if by accident ; but Defoe and Richardson have no fire. 
Burns, again, is not more distinguished by the clearness than 
by the impetuous force of his conceptions. Of the strength, 
the piercing emphasis with which he thought, his emphasis of 
expression may give a humble but the readiest proof. Who 
ever uttered sharper sayings than his ; words more memorable, 
now by their burning vehemence, now by their cool vigor and 
laconic pith ? A single phrase depicts a whole subject, a whole 
scene. We hear of " a gentleman that derived his patent of 
nobility direct from Almighty God." Our Scottish forefathers 
in the battle-field struggled forward '■'■ red-wat-sliod i''* in this 



47. Samuel Richardson (1689-1761): The first great English novelist, au- 
thor of ■' Pamela," " Clarissa Harlowe," and " Sir Charles Grandisou." 

48. Daniel Defoe (1661-1731): The celebrated author of " Robinson Cru- 
soe," " History of the London Plague," aud some two hundred other works. 



28 BURNS. 

one word, a full vision of horror and carnage, perhaps too 
frightfully accurate for Art ! 

In fact, one of the leading features in the mind of Burns is 
this vigor of his strictly intellectual perceptions. A resolute 
force is ever visible in his judgments, and in his feelings and 
volitions. Professor Stewart *^ says of him, with some sur- 
prise : "All the faculties of Burns's mind were, as far as I could 
judge, equally vigorous; and his predilection for poetry was 
rather the result of his own enthusiastic and impassioned 
temper, than of a genius exclusively adapted to that species 
of composition. From his conversation I should have pro- 
nounced him to be fitted to excel in whatever walk of ambi- 
tion he had chosen to exert his abilities." But this, if we 
mistake not, is at all times the very essence of a truly poetical 
endowment. ' Poetry, except in such cases as that of Keats," 
■where the whole consists in a weak-eyed maudlin sensibility, 
and a certain vague random tunefulness of nature, is no sepa- 
rate faculty, no organ which can be superadded to the rest, or 
disjoined from them; but rather the result of their general 
harmony and completion. The feelings, the gifts that exist in 
the Poet are those that exist, with more or less development, 
in every human soul : the imagination, which shudders at the 
Hell of Dante, ^^ is the same faculty, weaker in degree, 
w^hich called that picture into being. How does the Poet 
speak to men, with power, but by being still more a man than 
they ? Shakspeare, it has been well observed, in the planning 
and completing of his tragedies, has shown an Understanding, 
were it nothing more, which might have governed states, or 



49. Dugald Stewart (1753-182S): The eminent Professor of Moral Philos- 
ophy in the University of Edinburgh. 

50. Jolin Keats (1795-1821): Author of "Hyperion," "Lamia," and 
" Eve of St. Agnes." This unappreciative criticism suggests Carlyle's char- 
acterization of Shelley as " a kind of ghastly object, colorless, pallid, without 
health, or warmth, or vigor." For Carlyle there could be no beauty with- 
out force. 

51. Hell of Dante: Dante's great poem, the " Divina Commedia" (Divine 
Comedy), is divided into three parts, " Inferno " (Hell), '' Purgatorio" (Purga- 
tory), and 'Paradiso" (Paradise). The poet depicts a vision, in which he is 
conducted by Virgil thi'ough the ten circles of Hell, where he witnesses " all 
the woe of all the universe;" then thi'ough Purgatory, and then, by Beatrice, 
through Paradise. 



BURN'S. 29 

indited a N'ovum Organum. ^"^ What Burns's force of under- 
standing may have been, we have less means of judging: it 
had to dwell among the humblest objects ; never saw Philoso- 
phy; never rose, except by natural effort and for short in- 
tervals, into the region of great ideas. Nevertheless, sufficient 
indication, if no proof sufficient, remains for us in his works: 
we discern the brawny movements of a gigantic though untu- 
tored strength ; and can understand how, in conversation, his 
quick sure 'insight into men and things may, as much as 
aught else about him, have amazed the best thinkers of his 
time and country. 

But, unless we mistake, the intellectual gift of Burns is fine 
as well as strong. The more delicate relations of things could 
not well have escaped his eye, for they were intimately pres- 
ent to his heart. The logic of the senate and the forum is in- 
dispensable, but not all-sufficient ; nay, perhaps the highest 
Truth is that which will the most certainly elude it. For this 
logic works by words, and "the highest," it has been said, 
" cannot be expressed in words." We are not without tokens 
of an openness for this higher truth also, of a keen though un- 
cultivated sense for it, having existed in Burns. Mr. Stewart, 
it will be remembered, "wonders," in the passage above 
quoted, that Burns had formed some distinct conception of the 
" doctrine of association." We rather think that far subtler 
things than the doctrine of association had from of old been 
familiar to him. Here for instance : 

" We know nothing," thus writes he, "or next to nothing, 
of the structure of our souls, so we cannot account for those 
seeming caprices in them, that one should be particularly 
pleased with this thing, or struck with that, which, on minds 
of a different cast, makes no extraordinary impression. I have 
some favorite flowers in spring, among which are the moun- 
tain-daisy, the harebell, the foxglove, the wild-brier rose, the 
budding birch, and the hoary hawthorn, that I Tiew and hang 
over with particular delight. I never hear the loud solitary 



52. Novum Organum: Bacon's g:reat philosophical work; the "new 
method," by which human knowledge should be increased. 



30 BUKTS-S. 

whistle of the curlew in a summer noon, or the wild mixing 
cadence of a troop of gray plover in an autumnal morning, 
without feeling an elevation of soul like the enthusiasm of de- 
votion or poetry. Tell me, my dear friend, to what can this 
be owing ? Are we a piece of machinery, which, like the 
^olian harp, passive, takes the impression of the passing ac- 
cident ; or do these workings argue something within us above 
the trodden clod ? I own myself partial to such proofs of those 
awful and important realities : a God that made all things, 
man's immaterial and immortal nature, and a world of weal 
or woe beyond death aiid the grave." 

Force and fineness of understanding are often spoken of as 
something different from general force and fineness of nature, 
as something partly independent of them. The necessities of 
language so require it ; but in truth these qualities are not dis- 
tinct and independent : except in special cases, and from spe- 
cial causes, they ever go together. A man of strong under- 
standing is generally a man of strong character ; neither is 
delicacy in the one kind often divided from delicacy in the 
other, i No one, at all events, is ignorant that in the Poetry of 
Burns keenness of insight keeps pace with keenness of feeling ; 
that his light is not more pervading than his warmth. He is 
a man of the most impassioned temper ; with passions not 
strong only, but noble, and of the sort in which great virtues 
and great poems take their rise. It is reverence, it is love to- 
wards all Nature that inspires him, that opens his eyes to its 
beauty, and makes heart and voice eloquent in its praise. 
There is a true old saying, that*." Love furthers knowledge:" 
but above all, it is the living essence of that knowledge which 
makes poets ; the first principle of its existence, increase, ac- 
tivity. Of Burns's fervid affection, his generous all-embracing 
Love, we ha.ve spoken already, as of the grand distinction of 
his nature, seen equally in word and deed, in his Life and in 
his Writings. It were easy to multiply examples. B Not man 
only, but all that environs man in the material and moral uni- 
verse, is lovely in his sight ': ' ' the hoary hav»'thorn, " the ' ' troop 
of gray plover," the "solitary curlew," all are dear to him ; all 
live in this. Earth along with him, and to all he is knit as in 



BURKS. 31 

mysterious brotherhood. How touching is it, for instance, that, 
amidst the gloom" of personal misery, brooding over the wintry 
desolation without him and within him, he thinks of the 
*' ourie cattle" and " silly sheep," and their sufferings in the 
pitiless storm ! 

I thought me on the ourie cattle, ^^ 
Or silly sheep, wha bide this brattle 

O' wintiy war, 
Or tho' the drift, deep-lairing, sprattle. 

Beneath a scar. 
Ilk happing bird, wee helpless thing. 
That in the merry months o' spring 
Delighted me to hear thee sing, 

What comes o' thee? 
Where wilt thou cow'r thy chittering wing, 
And close thy e'e? 

The tenant of the mean hut, with its ' ' ragged roof and 
chinky wall," has a heart to pity even these ! This is worth 
several homilies on Mercy ; for it is the voice of Mercy herself. 
Burns, indeed, lives in sympathy ; his soul rushes forth into 
all realms of being ; nothing that has existence can be indiffer- 
ent to him. The very Devil he cannot hate with right ortho- 
doxy : 

But fare you weel, auld Nickie-ben ; 

O, wad^^* ye tak a thought and men' 1 

Ye aiblins might,— I dinna ken, — 
Still hae a stake ; 

I'm wae to think upo' yon den. 

Even for your sake ! 

" ^e is the father of curses and lies," said Dr. Slop ; " and is 
cursed and damned already." — "I am sorry for it," quoth my 
uncle Toby ! ^* — a Poet without Love were a physical and meta- 
physical impossibility. 

But has it not been said, in contradiction to this principle, 
that " Indignation makes verses"?^® It had been so said, and 



53. Ourie cattle: Shivering cattle ; ivha bide, etc., who endvu-e this race; 
deep-lairing, sprattle, deep-wading, struggle; scar, barren bank, or mountain 
side; ilk happing, each hopping; chittering, trembling with cold. 

54. Wad: would; men\ mend; aiblins, perhaps; dinna ken, do not know; 
ivae, sorrowful. 

55. Dr. Slop and Uncle Toby: Characters in Sterne's " Tristram Shandy." 

56. Indignation maizes verses: From Juvenal; "Faqit Indigna^iQ 
versus." 



32 BURNS. 

is true enough : but the contradiction is apparent, not real. 
Tlie Indignation which makes verses is, properly speaking, an 
inverted Love ; the love of some right, some worth, some good- 
ness, belonging to ourselves or others, which has been injured, 
and which this tempestuous feeling issues forth to defend and 
avenge. No selfish fury of heart, existing there as a primary 
feeling, and without its opposite, ever produced much Poetry : 
otherwise, we suppose, the Tiger were the most musical of all 
our choristers. Johnson" said, he loved a good hater ; by 
which he must have meant, not so much one that hated vio- 
lently, as one that hated wisely ; hated baseness from love of 
nobleness. However, in spite of Johnson's paradox, tolerable 
enough for once in speech, but which need not have been so 
often adopted in print since then, we rather believe that good 
men deal sparingly in hatred, either wise or unwise : nay that 
a "good "hater is still a desideratum in this world. The 
Devil, at least, who passes for the chief and best of that .class, 
is said to be nowise an amiable character. 

Of the verses which Indignation makes, Burns has also given 
us specimens : and among the best that were ever given. Who 
will forget his '"'' Dweller in yon Dungeon dark;'''' a piece that 
might have been chanted by the Furies of ^schylus ? ^^ The 
secrets of the infernal Pit are laid bare ; a boundless baleful 
" darkness visible ;" ^^ and streaks of hell-fire quivering madly 
in its black haggard bosom ! 

Dweller in yon Dungeon dark, 
Hangman of Creation, mark ! 
Who in widow's weeds appears, 
Laden with imhonored years, 
Noosing with care a bursting purse, 
Baited with many a deadly curse ! 

Why should we speak of Scots wha liae wV Wallace hied ; 
since all know of it, from the king to the meanest of his sub- 
jects ? This dithyrambic was composed on horseback ; in rid- 

57. Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784): Author of the famous "Diction- 
ary." the " Rambler." and " Rasselas." His words were, " Sir, I like a good 
hater." See BosweU's " Life of Johnson." 

58. Furies of ^scliylus : The Furies were the goddesses of vengeance. 
The allusion is to the chorus of Furies in the " Eumenides," one of the trage- 
dies of ^schylus, the greatest Greek dramatic poet. 

59. Milton's Paradise Lost, Bk, I. 6g. 



BURNS. 33 

ing in the middle of tempests, over the wildest Galloway moor, 
in company with a Mr. Syme, who, observing the poet's looks, 
forbore to speak, — judiciously enough, for a man composing 
Bruce^s Address might be unsafe to trifle with. Doubtless this 
stern hymn was singing itself, as he formed it, through the soul 
of Burns : but to the external ear, it should be sung with the 
throat of the whirlwind. So long as there is warm blood in the 
heart of Scotchman or man, it will move in fierce thrills under 
this war-ode ; the best, we believe, that was ever written by 
any pen. 

Another wild stormf ul Song, that dwells in our ear and mind 
with a strange tenacity, is Macpher soil's Farewell.^^ Perhaps 
there is something in the tradition itself that co-operates. For 
was not this grim Celt, this shaggy Northland Cacus," that 
"lived a life of sturt^^ and strife, and died by treacherie," — 
was not he too one of the Nimrods" and Napoleons of the 
earth, in the arena of his own remote misty glens, for want of 
a clearer and wider one ? Nay, was there not a touch of grace 
given him ? A fiber of love and softness, of poetry itself, must 
have lived in his savage heart : for he composed that air the 
night before his execution ; on the wings of that poor melody 
his better soul would soar away above oblivion, pain and all 
the ignominy and despair, which, like an avalanche, was hurl- 
ing him to the abyss ! Here, also, as at Thebes," and in Pe- 
lops' line,^^ was -material Fate^^ matched against man's Free- 

60. Macpherson's Farewell : Macpherson was a Highland freebooter, of 
ereat strength and musical taste. While lying in prison he composed his 
''Farewell," words and air, and when brought to the gallows played it, and 
then broke his violin across his knee. Burns's chorus, "Sae rantingjy, sae 
wantonly, etc.," is an adaptation of Macpherson's words. 

61 Cacn-s : A mighty robber giant who lived in a cave on Mount Aventine 
in Italy. He stole some oxen from Hercules and dragged them into his cave 
by their tails, to deceive the hero by the tracks as to the direction taken; but, 
being discovered by the bellowing of the cattle, he was strangled by the en- 
raged hero. 

62. Stmt: Disturbance, or molestation 

63. Niinrod : The mighty hunter. See Qen. x. 8-11, and 1 Chr. i. 10. 

64. Thebes : The capital of Boeotia, the scene of some of the great Greek 
tragedies, the " Seven against Thebes" of ^schylus. the " CEdipusTyrannus" 
of Sophocles, and others. 

6.5. Felops' line : An allusion to the tragedies of ^schyluson the subject 
of the murder of Agamemnon, a descendant of Pelops, King of Pisa in 
EUs, who gave his name to Peloponnesus. Cotnpare Milton's lines in '* IlPen- 
seroso" on " gorgeous Tragedy," " presenting Thebes, or Pelops' line." 

66. Material Fate : The fundamental idea in the Greek tragedies is 
fate, destiny, or Nemesis. 



34 BUEN^S. 

will ; matched in bitterest though obscure duel ; and the ethe- 
real soul sank not, even in its blindness, without a cry which 
has survived it. But who, except Burns, could have given 
words to such a soul ; words that we never listen to without 
a strange half -barbarous, half-poetic fellow-feeling ? 

Sae rantingly, sae wantonly, 

Sae dauntingly gaed he ;' 
He play''d a spring, and danced it round, 

Below the gallows-tree. 

Under a lighter disguise, the same principle of Love, which 
we have recognized as the great characteristic of Burns, and of 
all true poets; occasionally manifests itself in the shape of Hu- 
mor. Everywhere, indeed, in his sunny moods, a full buoyant 
flood of mirth rolls through the mind of Burns ; he rises t6 the 
high, and stoops to the low, and is brother and playmate to all 
Nature. We speak not of his bold and often irresistible faculty 
of caricature ; for this is Drollery rather than Humor : but a 
much tenderer sportfulness dwells in him ; and comes forth 
here and there, in evanescent and beautiful touches ; as in his 
Address to the Mouse, or the Farmer's Ma7'e, or in his Elegy 
on poor Mailie, which last may be reckoned his happiest ef- 
fort of this kind. In these pieces there are traits of a Humor 
as fine as that of Sterne f yet altogether different, original, 
peculiar, the Humor of Burns. 

Of the tenderness, the playful pathos, and many other kin- 
dred qualities of Burns's Poetry, much more might be said ; but 
now, with these poor outlines of a sketch, we must prepare to 
quit this part of our subject. To speak of his individual Writ- 
ings, adequately and with any detail, would lead us far beyond 
our limits. As already hinted, we can look on but few of these 
pieces as, in strict critical language, deserving the name of 
Poems : they are rhymed eloquence, rhymed pathos, rhymed 
sense ; yet seldom essentially melodious, aerial, poetical. Tarn 
o' Shanter itself, which enjoys so high a favor, does not appear 



67. I^aurence Sterne (1713-1708): Author of the famotis novels " Tris- 
tram Shandy" and " The Sentimental Journey " Carlyle elsewhere speaks 
of him as " our best specimen of humor, with all his faults ; our finest, if not 
pur strongest." 



BURN'S. 35 

to us at all decisivel}' to come under this last category. It is not 
so much a poem, as a piece of sparkling rhetoric ; the heart and 
body of the story still lies hard and dead. He has not gone 
back, much less carried us back, into that dark, earnest, won- 
dering age, when the tradition was believed, and when it took 
its rise ; he does not attempt, by any new-modeling of his super- 
natural ware, to strike anew that deep mysterious chord of hu- 
man nature, which once responded to such things ; and which 
lives in us too, and will forever live, though silent now, or vi- 
brating with far other notes, and to far different issues. Our 
German readers will understand us, when we say, that he is not 
the Tieck^^ but the Musaus^' of this tale. Externally it is all 
green and living ; yet look closer, it is no firm growth, but 
only ivy on a rock. The piece does not properly cohere : the 
strange chasm which yawns in our incredulous imaginations 
between the Ayr public-house and the gate of Tophet,^" is no- 
where bridged over, nay the idea of such a bridge is laughed 
at ; and thus the Tragedy of the adventure becomes a mere 
drunken phantasmagoria, or many-colored spectrum painted 
on ale-vapors, and the Farce alone has any reality. We do 
not say that Burns should have made much more of this tradi- 
tion ; we rather think that, for strictly poetical purposes, not 
much was to be made of it. Neither are we blind to the deep, 
varied, genial power displayed in what he has actually ac- 
complished ; but we find far more " Shakspearean" qualities, 
as these of Tarn o' Shanter have been fondly named, in many 
of his other pieces ; nay we incline to believe that this latter 
might have been written, all but quite as well, by a man who, 
in place of genius, had only possessed talent. 

Perhaps we may venture to say, that the most strictly poet- 
ical of all his "poems" is one which does not appear in Cur- 
rie's Edition ; but has been often printed before and since, un- 

68. Liidwig Tieck il7?3-18C3): A German poet and novelist, especially 
famous foi' his fantastic tales, and his translation of Shakspeare. 

69 Karl August Musaus (1735-1787 n A German writer of humorous and 
satirical v.orks, author of "Popular Legends of Germany" and 'Friend 
Hein's Apparitions, in Holbein's Manner." 

70. Topliet : Originally a place near Jerusalem in the valley of Gehenna, 
where fire was kept perpetually burning to destroy the dead bodies, bones, 
and filth deposited there ; hence the derived meaning, hell. 



36 BURKS. 

der the humble title of The Jolly Beggars. The subject truly 
is among the lowest in I^ature ; but it only the more shows 
our Poet's gift in raising it into the domain of Art. To our 
minds, this piece seems thoroughly compacted ; melted to- 
gether, refined ; and poured forth in one flood of true liquid 
harmony. It is light, airy, soft of movement ; yet sharp and 
precise in its details ; every face is a portrait : that rawile 
oarlin^''^ that wee Apollo, that 8on of Mars, are Scottish, yet 
ideal ; the scene is at once a dream, and the very Rag- 
castle of "Poosie Nansie.'' Farther, it seems in a considera- 
ble degree complete, a real self-supporting Whole, which is the 
highest merit in a poem. The blanket of the Night is drawn 
asunder for a moment ; in full, ruddy, flaming light, these 
rough tatterdemalions are seen in their boisterous revel ; for 
the strong pulse of Life vindicates its right to gladness even 
here ; and when the curtain closes, we prolong the action, 
without effort ; the next day as the last, our Caird and our 
Balladmonger ave singing and soldiering; their ''brats and 
callets " are hawking, begging, cheating ; and some other 
night, in new combinations, they will wring from Fate another 
hour of wassail and good cheer. Apart from the universal 
sympathy with man which this again bespeaks in Burns, a gen- 
uine inspiration and no inconsiderable technical talent are 
manifested here. There is the fidelity, humor, warm life and 
accurate painting and grouping of some Teniers,'^ for whom 
hostlers and carousing peasants are not without significance. 
It would be strange, doubtless, to call this the best of Burns's 
writings : we mean to say only, that it seems to us the most 
perfect of its kind, as a piece of poetical composition, stric^tly 
so called. In the Beggars'" Opera,''^ in the Beggars'' Bush,''* 
as other critics have already remarked, there is nothing which, 



71. Raucle carlin : A fearless old woman. The scene of the poem is laid 
at the ale-house of Poosie-Nansie. 

72. David Teniers (158^-1649) : A famous Flemish painter. His subjects 
were mainly from tavern scenes and low life. His son was a still greater 
painter. 

73. Beggars' Opera: The first English ballad opera, written by John 
Gay, and first acted at Lincoln's Inn Fields, London, in 1727. 

74. Beggars' iiush : A comedy by Francis Beaimiont, written in 1661. 




L 



BURNS. 



in real poetic vigor, equals this Cantata;''^ nothing, as we 
think, which comes within many degrees of it. 

But by far the most finished, complete and truly inspired 
pieces of Burns are, without dispute, to be found among his 
Songs. It is here that, although through a small aperture, his 
light shines with least obstruction ; in its. highest beauty and 
pure sunny clearness. The reason may be, that Song is a brief 
simple species of composition ; and requires nothing so much 
for its perfection as genuine poetic feeling, genuine music of 
heart. Yet the Song has its rules equally with the Tragedy ; 
rules which in most cases are poorly fulfilled, in many cases are 
not so much as felt. We might write a long essay on the Songs 
of Burns ; which we reckon by far the best that Britain has yet 
produced: for indeed, since the era of Queen Elizabeth, we know 
not that, by any other hand, aught truly worth attention has 
been accomplished in this department.i True, we have songs 
enough " by persons of quality;" we have tawdry, hollow, wine- 
bred madrigals ; many a rhymed speech ' ' in the flowing and 
watery vein of Osorius the Portugal Bishop," " rich in sonorous 
words, and, for moral, dashed perhaps with some tint of a sen- 
timental sensuality ; all which many persons cease not from en- 
deavoring to sing ; though for most part, we fear, the music is 
but from the throat outwards, or at best from some region far 
enough short of the Soul; not in which, but in a certain inane 
Limbo" *bf the Fancy, or even in some vaporous debatable- 
land on the outskirts of the Nervous System, most of such 
madrigals and rhymed speeches seem to have originated. 

With the Songs of Burns we must not name these things. 
Independently of the clear, manly, heartfelt sentiment that ever 



75. Cantata : A musical composition composed of solos and choruses, 
dramatically arranged. 

76 Osorius: A learned Portuguese bishop, called the "Cicero of Portu- 
gal," for the purity of his Latin style. Among his famous works is an " Ad- 
dress to Queen Elizabeth, on the True Faith." Bacon said, " his vein was 
weak and waterish." 

77. Limbo : According to mediaeval theology, a place on the confines of 
Paradise, for those who cannot be admitted into Paradise, either because they 
have never heard the gospel or have never been baptized. Milton (Paradise 
Lost, Bk. III. 448) makes it the "Fools' Paradise," a place for idiots, mad- 
men, and others not responsible for their sins. 



38 BURN'S. 

pervades his poetry, his Songs are honest in another point of 
view : in form, as well as in spirit. They do not affect to be 
set to music, but they actually and in themselves are music ; 
they have received their life, and fashioned themselves to- 
gether, in the medium of Harmony, as Venus rose from the 
bosom of the sea.'^ The story, the feeling, is not detailed, but 
suggested ; not said, or spouted, in rhetorical completeness 
and coherence ; but sung, in fitful gushes, in glowing hints, in 
fantastic breaks, in ivarhlings not of the voice only, but of the 
whole mind. We consider this to be the essence of a song ; 
and that no songs since the little careless catches, and as it 
were drops of song, which Shakspeare has here and there 
sprinkled over his Plaj^s, fulfill this condition in nearly the 
same degree as most of Burns's do. Such grace and truth of 
external movement, too, presupposes in general a correspond- 
ing force and truth of sentiment and inward meaning. The 
Songs of Burns are not more perfect in the former quality than 
in the latter. With what tenderness he sings, yet with what 
vehemence and entireness ! There is a piercing wail in his 
sorrow, the purest rapture in his joy ; he burns with the stern- 
est ire, or laughs with the loudest or sliest mirth ; and yet he 
is sweet and soft, " sweet as the smile when fond lovers meet, 
and soft as their parting tear." If/we farther take into ac- 
count the immense variety of his" subjects ; how, from the 
loud flowing revel in Willie hrew^d a Peck o' Maut, to the still, 
rapt enthusiasm of sadness for Ma7'y in Heaven; from the 
glad kind greeting of Aidd Lang syne, or the comic archness 
of Duncan Gray, to the fire-eyed fury of Scots wha hae wV 
Wallace hied, he has found a tone and words for every mood of 
man's heart, — it will seem a small praise if we rank him as the 
first of all our Song-writers ; for we know not where to find one 
worthy of being second to him. 

It is on his Songs, as we believe, that Burns's chief influence 
as an author will ultimately be found to depend : nor, if our 
Fletcher's aphorism" is true, shall we account this a small 

78. In Greek mytholoery, Venus (Aphrodite) is represented as having sprung 
from the foam of the sea 

79. Fletcher's aphorism: Andrew Fletcher, a Scottish orator, in a letter 



BURNS. 39 

influence. "Let me make the songs of a people," said he, 
"and you shall make its laws." Surely, if ever any Poet 
might have equaled himself with Legislators on this ground, 
it was Burns. His Songs are already part of the mother- 
tongue, not of Scotland only but of Britain, and of the millions 
that in all ends of the earth speak a British language. In hut 
and hall, as the heart unfolds itself in many-colored Joy and 
woe of existence, the name, the voice of that joy and that woe, 
is the name and voice which Burns has given them. Strictly 
speaking, perhaps no British man has so deeply affected the 
thoughts and feelings of so many men, as this solitary and 
altogether private individual, with means apparently the 
humblest. 

In another point of view, moreover, we incline to think that 
Burns's influence may have been considerable : we mean, as 
exerted specially on the Literature of his country, at least on 
the Literature of Scotland, Among the great changes which 
British, particularly Scottish literature, has undergone since 
that period, one of the greatest will be found to consist in its 
remarkable increase of nationality. Even the English writers, 
most popular in Burns's time, were little distinguished for 
their literary patriotism, in this its best sense. A certain at- 
tenuated cosmopolitanism had, in good measure, taken place 
of the old insular home-feeling ; literature was, as it were, 
without any local environment ; was not nourished by the af- 
fections which spring from a native soil. Our Grays and 
Glovers'*" seemed to write almost as if in vacuo ; ^' the thing 
written bears no mark of place ; it is not written so much for 
Englishmen, as for men ; or rather, which is the inevitable 
result of this, for certain Generalizations which philosophy 
termed men. Goldsmith®^ is an exception : not so Johnson ; 

to the Marquis of Montrose. " I knew a very wise man that believed that, if 
a man were permitted to make all the ballads, be need not care who should 
make the laws of a nation." 

80. Grays and Glovers : Thomas Gray (1716-1771), author of the " Ele^ 
written in a Country Churchyard." Richard Glover (1712-178.5), author of 
'• Leonidas." Both poets were distinguished for classical scholarship. 

X 81. In vacuo : In empty space. 

*-5i.82. Oliver Gold.smitli (172S-1774): Goldsmith, in his "Traveller" and 
" Deserted Village,''' was one of the first to break away from the classical af- 
fectation of Pope's school, and introduce nature and humanity into poetry ^v, 



40 BURNS. 

the scene of his Rambler ^^ is little more English than that of 
his Rasselas. 

But if such was, in some degree, the case with England, it 
was, in the highest degree, the case with Scotland. In fact, 
our Scottish literature had, at that period, a very singular 
aspect ; unexampled, so far as we know, except perhaps at 
Geneva, where the same state of matters appears still to con- 
tinue. For a long period after Scotland became British, we 
had no literature : at the date when Addison and Steele^* were 
writing their Spectators, our good Thomas Boston^* was writ- 
ing, with the noblest intent, but alike in defiance of grammar 
and philosophy, his Fourfold State of Man. Then came the 
schisms in our National Church, and the fiercer schisms in our 
Body Politic : Theologic ink, and Jacobite blood, ^^ with gall 
enough in both cases, seemed to have blotted out the intellect 
of the country : however, it was only obscured, not obliterated^ 
Lord Kames" made nearly the first attempt at writing Eng- 
lish ; and ere long, Hume,^^ Kobertson,^^ Smith, ^" and a whole 
host of followers, attracted hither the eyes of all Europe. 
And yet in this brilliantjesuscitation of our "fervid genius," 
there was nothing truly Scottish, nothing indigenous ; except, 
perhaps, the natural impetuosity of intellect, which we some- 
times claim, and are sometimes upbraided with, as a charac- 
teristic of our nation. It is curious to remark that Scotland, 
so full of writers, had no Scottish culture, nor indeed any 

83. Ivanibler : A series of periodical essays in the form of Addison's 
"Spectator." "Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia" is a prose romance; the 
thought is English, but the scenery is oriental. 

84. Joseph Addison (1672-1719), Ricliard Steele (1671-1729): This cele- 
brated literary partnership began in 1709 with the " Tatler," issued three 
times a week, which was foJlow^ed in 1711 by the " Spectator," issued daily. 

85 Thomas Boston (lti76-1732): A Scottish Calvinistic divine, published 
his " Human Nature in its Fourfold State" in 1720. 

86. Jacobite blood : The adherents of the dethroned James II. and his 
descendants were called Jacobites; Lat. Jacobus, James. They were power- 
ful in Scotland, and twice rose in unsuccessful revolt. 

87. Liord Kames : Henry Home (1696-1782), a Scottish judge. His chief 
work, " Elements of Criticism," received the praise of Dr. Johnson, who 
hated Scotchmen on principle. 

88. David Hume (1711-1776): Author of the celebrated "History of Eng- 
land " and of important philosophical essays. 

89. William Robertson (1721-1793 : An eminent historian, author of the 
" History of Scotland," and the " History of the Emperor Charles V." 

90. Adam Smith (1723-1790): Philosopher and political economist, author 
of "Theory of Moral Sentiments" and "The Wealth of Nations." Some- 
times called the " father of political economy." 



BURKS. 



41 



Enc^lish ; our culture was almost exclusively French. It was 
by "studying Racine- and Voltaire/^ Batteux" and Boileau,^* 
that Karnes had trained himself to be a critic and philosopher ; 
it was the light of Montesquieu^^ and Mably^« that guided 
Robertson in his political speculations ; Quesnay's" lamp that 
kindled the lamp of Adam Smith. Hume was too rich a man 
to borrow ; and perhaps he reacted on the French more than 
he was acted on by them : but neither had he aught to do 
with Scotland ; Edinburgh, equally with La Fleche,«« was but 
the lodging and laboratory, in which he not so much morally 
lived, as metaphysically investigated. Never, perhaps, was 
there a class of writers so clear and well ordered, yet so totally 
destitute, to all appearance, of any patriotic affection, nay of 
any human affection whatever. H The French wits of the period 
were as unpatriotic : but their general deficiency m moral 
principles, not to say their avowed sensuality and unbelief m 
all virtue, strictly so called, render this accountable enough.] f 
We hope, there is a patriotism founded on something better 
than prejudice ; that our country may be dear to us, without 
injury to our philosophy ; that in loving and justly prizing all 
other lands, we may prize justly, and yet love before all others 
our own stern Motherland, and the venerable Structure of 
social and moral Life, which Mind has through long ages been 
building up for us there. Surely there is nourishment for 

Q1 T«.!in -Racine (1639-1699): A French dramatic poet, whom Hallam 
thought to b^'next to Shakspeare among all the modems," and -second 

P 9^ NicoVarBoUeau (1636-1711): A French Poet and satins and highest 

states of America^" ,i694-l774V A French physician and political 

economS%\Tf e^^onenYoHht doc^ine of L«..fJ«n-e (Let things take 
^^m irF?^che : A town on the Loire, where Hu ne lived whUe writing his 
" Treatise on Human Nature." 



42 ' ^ ' BURKS. 

the better part of man's heart in all this : surely the roots, 
that have fixed themselves in the very core of man's being, 
may be so cultivated as to grow up not into briers, but into 
roses, in the field of his life ! Our Scottish sages have no 
such propensities: the field of their life shows neither briers 
nor roses; but only a flat, continuous thrashing-floor for 
Logic, whereon all questions, from the "Doctrine of Rent" to 
the "Natural History of Religion," are thrashed and sifted 
with the same mechanical impartiality ! 
>s With Sir Walter Scott at the head of our literature, it can- 
' not be denied that much of this evil is past, or rapidly passing 
away : our chief literary men, whatever other faults they may 
have, no longer Hve among us like a French Colony, or some 
knot'of Propaganda'' Missionaries ; but like natural-born sub- 
jects of the soil, partaking and sympathizing in all our at- 
tachments, humors and habits. Our literature no longer 
grows in water but in mould, and with the true racy virtues 
of the soil and climate. How much of this change may be due 
to Burns, or to any other individual, it might be difficult to 
estimate. Direct literary imitation of Burns was not to be 
looked for. But his example, in the fearless adoption of do- 
mestic subjects, could not but operate from afar ; and cer- 
tainly in no heart did the love of country ever burn with a 
warmer glow than in that of Burns: "a tide of Scottish 
prejudice," as he modestly calls this deep and generous feel- 
ing, "had been poured along his veins ; and he felt that it 
would boil there till the flood-gates shut in eternal rest." It 
seemed to him, as if 7ie could do so little for his country, and 
yet would so gladly have done all. One small province stood 
open for him,— that of Scottish Song ; and how eagerly he en- 
tered on it, how devotedly he labored there ! In his toilsome 
journeyings, this object never quits him ; it is the little happy- 
valley of his careworn heart. In the gloom of his own afflic- 
tion, he eagerly searches after some lonely brother of the 
muse, and rejoices to snatch one other name from the oblivion 



99 Propaganda: A r .ciety established at Rome for the management of 
the Roman Catholic missions (Societas de Propaganda Fide). 



BURKS. 43 

that was covering it ! These were early feelings, and they 
abode with him to the end : 

... A wish (I mind its power), 
A wish, that to my latest hour 
Will strongly heave my breast,— 
That I, for poor axild Scotland's sake, 
Some useful plan or book could make, 
Or sing a sang at least. 

The rough bur Thistle spreading wide 

Amang the bearded bear, 
I turn'd my weeding-clips aside. 

And spared the symbol dear.^o" 

But to leave the mere literary character of Burns, which has 
already detained us too long. Far more interesting than any 
of his written works, as it appears to us, are his acted ones : 
the Life he willed and was fated to lead among his fellow-men. 
These Poems are but like little rhymed fragments scattered 
here and there in the grand unrhymed Romance of his earthly 
existence ; and it is only when intercalated ^"^ in this at their 
proper places, that they attain their full measure of signifi- 
cance. And this, too, alas, was but a fragment ! The plan 
of a mighty edifice had been sketched ; some columns, porticos, 
firm masses of building, stand completed ; the rest more or 
less clearly indicated ; with many a far-stretching tendency, 
which only studious and friendly eyes can now trace towards 
the purposed termination. For the work is broken oif in the 
middle, almost in the beginning ; and rises among us, beautiful 
and sad, at once unfinished and a ruin ! If charitable judg- 
ment was necessary in estimating his Poems, and justice re- 
quired that the aim and the manifest power to fulfill it must 
often be accepted for the fulfillment ; much more is this the 
case in regard to his Life, the sum and result of all his en- 
deavors, where his difiiculties came upon him not in detail 
only, but in mass ; and so much has been left unaccomplished, 
nay was mistaken, and altogether marred. 

Properly speaking, there is but one era in the life of Burns, 
and that the earliest. We have not youth and manhood, but 
^^j: 

100. Symbol dear : The thistle is the national emblem of Scotland. 

101. Intercalated : Inserted ; Lat. inter, between, and calare, to call. 



44 BURiTS. 

only youth : for, to the end, we discern no decisive change in 
the complexion of his character ; in his thirty-seventh year, 
he is still, as it were, in youth. With all that resoluteness of 
judgment, that penetrating insight, and singular maturity of 
intellectual power, exhibited in his writings, he never attains 
to any clearness regarding himself ; to the last, he never ascer- 
tains his peculiar aim, even with such distinctness as is com- 
mon among ordinary men ;| and therefore never can pursue it 
with that singleness of will, 'which insures success and some 
contentment to such men: To the last, he wavers between 
two purposes : glorying in his talent, like a true poet, he yet 
can not consent to make this his chief and sole glory^ and to 
follow it as the one thing needful, through poverty or riches, 
through good or evil report. Another far meaner ambition 
still cleaves to him ; he must dream and struggle about a cer- 
tain " Kock of Independence;" which, natural and even ad- 
mirable as it might be^ was still but a warring with the world, 
on the comparatively insignificant ground of his being more 
completely or less completely supplied with money than others; 
of his standing at a higher or at a lower altitude in general esti- 
mation than others. For the world still appears to him, as to 
the young, in borrowed colors : he expects from it what it can- 
not give to any man ; I'seeks for contentment, not within him- 
self, in action and wise effort, but from without, in the kind- 
ness of circumstances, in love, friendship, honor, pecuniary 
ease.l) He would be happy, not actively and in himself, but 
passively and from some ideal cornucopia of Enjoyments, not / 
earned by his own labor, but showered on him by the benefi- 
cence of Destiny. Thus, like a young man, he cannot gird 
himself up for any worthy well-calculated goal, but swerves 
to and fro, between passionate hope and remorseful disap- 
pointment :'' rushing onwards with a deep tempestuous force, 
he surmounts or breaks asunder many a barrier ; travels, nay 
advances far, but advancing only under uncertain guidance, 
is ever and anon turned from his path ; and to the last canno t 
reach the ^nly^ true happiness of a man, that of clear deoideH 
Activity in the sphere for which, by nature and circumstances, 
he has been fitted and appointed. 



buk:n^s. 45 

We do not say these things in dispraise of Burns ; nay, per- 
haps, they but interest us the more in his favor. This bless- 
ing is not given soonest to the best ; but rather, it is often the 
greatest minds that are latest in obtaining it ; for where most 
is to be developed, most time may be required to develop it. 
A complex condition had been assigned him from without ; as 
complex a condition from within: no " preestablished har- 
mony" existed between the clay soil of Mossgiel and the em- 
pyrean soul of Robert Burns ; it was not wonderful that the 
adjustment between them should have been long postponed, 
and his arm long cumbered, and his sight confused, in so vast 
and discordant an economy as he had been appointed steward 
over. Byron was, at his death, but a year younger than 
Burns ; and through life, as it might have appeared, far more 
simply situated : yet in him too we can trace no such adjust- 
ment, no such moral manhood ; but at best, and only a little 
before his end, the beginning of what seemed such. 
) By much the most striking incident in Burns's Life is his 
'journey to Edinburgh ; but perhaps a still more important one 
is his residence at Irvine, so early as in his twenty-third year. 
Hitherto his life had been poor and toilworn ; but otherwise 
not ungenial, and, with all its distresses, by no means unhap- 
py. In his parentage, deducting outward circumstances, he 
had every reason to reckon himself fortunate. His father was 
a man of thoughtful, intense, earnest character, as the best of 
our peasants are ; valuing knowledge, possessing some, and, 
what is far better and rarer, openminded for more : a man 
with a keen insight and devout heart ; reverent towards God, 
friendly therefore at once, and fearless towards all that God 
has made : in one word, though but a hard-handed peasant, a 
complete and fully unfolded Man. Such a father is seldom 
found in any rank in society ; and was worth descending far 
in society to seek. Unfortunately, he was very poor ; had he 
been even a little richer, almost never so little, the whole 
might have issued far otherwise. Mighty events turn on a 
straw ; the crossing of a brook decides the conquest of the 
world. Had this William Burns's small seven acres of nurs- 
ery-ground anywise prospered, the boy Robert had been sent 



i 



46 BURNS. 

to school ; had struggled forward, as so many weaker men do. 
to some university ; come forth not as a rustic wonder, but as 
a regular well-trained intellectual workman, and changed the 
whole course of British Literature, — for it lay in him to have 
done this ! But the nursery did not prosper ; poverty sank 
his whole family below the help of even our cheap school- 
system : Burns remained a hard -worked plow boy, and Brit- 
ish literature took its own course. Nevertheless, even in this 
rugged scene there is much to nourish him. If he drudges, 
it is with his brother, and for his father and mother, whom 
he loves, and would fain shield from want. Wisdom is not 
banished from their poor hearth, nor the balm of natural feel- 
ing : the solemn words. Let us worship God, are heard there 
from a "priest-like father ;" "^ if threatenings of unjust men 
throw mother and children into tears, these are tears not of 
grief only, but of holiest affection ; every heart in that humble 
group feels itself the closer knit to every other ; in their hard 
warfare they are there together, a " little band of brethren." 
Neither are such tears, and the deep beauty that dwells in 
them, their only portion. Light visits the hearts as it does the 
eyes of all living : there is a force, too, in this youth, that en- 
ables him to trample on misfortune ; nay to bind it under his 
feet to make him sport. J For a bold, warm, buoyant humor of 
character has been given nim ; and so the thick- coming shapes 
of evil are w-elcomed with a gay, friendly irony, and in their 
closest pressure he bates no jot of heart or hope. Vague 
yearnings of ambition fail not, as he grows up ; dreamy fan- 
cies hang like cloud-cities around him ; the curtain of Exist- 
ence is slow^ly rising, in many colored splendor and gloom : 
and the auroral light of first love is gilding his horizon, and 
the music of song is on his path ; and so he walks 

in erlory and in joy. 

Behind his plow, upon the mountain side. 

U We ourselves know, from the best evidence, that up to this 

102. See "The Cotter's Saturday Night," stanzas 12-14. 



BURNS. 47 

date Burns was happy ; nay that he was the gayest, brightest, 
most fantastic, fascinating being to be found in the world ; 
more so even than he ever afterwards appeared. But now, at 
this early age, he quits the paternal roof ; goes forth into looser, 
louder, more exciting society ; and becomes initiated in those 
dissipations, those vices, which a certain class of philosophers 
have asserted to be a natural preparative for entering on active 
life ; a kind of mud-bath, in which the youth is, as it were, 
necessitated to steep, and, we suppose, cleanse himself, before 
the real toga of Manhood can be laid on him. We shall not 
dispute much with this class of philosophers ; we hope they 
are mistaken : for Sin and Remorse so easily beset us at all 
stages of life, and are always such indifferent company, that it 
seems hard we should, at any stage, be forced and fated not 
only to meet but to yield to them, and even serve for a term 
in their leprous armada. We hope it is not so. Clear we are, 
at all events, it cannot be the training one receives in this 
Devil's-service, but only our determining to desert from it, 
that fits us for true manly Action. We become men, not 
after we have been dissipated, and disappointed in the chas^ 
of false pleasure ; but after we have ascertained, in any way, 
what impassable barriers hem us in through this life ; how 
mad it is to hope for contentment to our infinite soul from 
the gifts of this extremely finite world ; that a man must be 
sufficient for himself ; and that for suffering and enduring 
there is no remedy but striving and doings \ Manhood begins 
when we have in any way made truce with Necessity ; begins 
even when we have surrendered to Necessity, as the most part 
only do ; but begins joyfully and hopefully only when we have 
reconciled ourselves to Necessity ; and thus, in reality, tri- 
umphed over it, and felt that in Necessity we are free. Sure- 
ly, such lessons as this last, which, in one shape or other, is 
the grand lesson for every mortal man, are better learned from 
the lips of a devout mother, in the looks and actions of a de- 
vout father, while the heart is yet soft and pliant, than in col- 
lision with the sharp adamant of Fate, attracting us to ship- 
wreck us, when the heart is grown hard, and may be broken 
before it will become contrite. Had Burns continued to learn 



48 BURNS. 

this, as he was already learning it, in his father's cottage, he 
would have learned it fully, which he never did ; and been 
saved many a lasting aberration, many a bitter hour and year 
of remorseful sorrow. 

It seems to us another circumstance of fatal import in 
Burns's history, that at this time too he became involved in the 
religious quarrels of his district ; that he was enlisted and 
feasted, as the fighting man of the New-Light Priesthood, in 
their highly unprofitable warfare. At the tables of these free- 
minded clergy he learned much more than was needful for 
him. Such liberal ridicule of fanaticism awakened in his mind 
scruples about Religion itself ; and a whole world of Doubts, 
which it required quite another set of conjurors than these 
men to exorcise. We do not say that such an intellect as his 
could have escaped similar doubts at some period of his history ; 
or even that he could, at a later period, have come through 
them altogether victorious and unharmed : but it seems pecu- 
liarly unfortunate that this time, above all others, should 
have been fixed for the encounter. For now, with principles 
assailed by evil example from without, by "passions raging 
like demons" from within, he had little need of skeptical mis- 
givings to whisper treason in the heat of the battle, or to cut 
off his retreat if he were already defeated. He loses his feel- 
ing of innocence ; his mind is at variance with itself ; the old 
divinity no longer presides there ; but wild Desires and wild 
Repentance alternately oppress him. Ere long, too, he has 
committed himself before the world ; his character for 
sobriety, dear to a Scottish peasant as few corrupted world- 
lings can even conceive, is destroyed in the eyes of men ; and 
his only refuge consists in trying to disbelieve his guiltiness, 
and is but a refuge of lies. The blackest desperation now 
gathers over him, broken only by red lightnings of remorse. 
The whole fabric of his life is blasted asunder ; for now not 
only his character, but his personal liberty, is to be lost ; men 
and Fortune are leagued for his hurt ; "hungry Ruin has him 
in the wind." He sees no escape but the saddest of all : exile 
from his loved country, to a country in every sense inhospi- 
table and abhorrent to him. While the "gloomy night is 



BUKKS. 49 

gathering fast," in mental storm and solitude, as well as in 
physical, lie sings his wild farewell to Scotland i^"' 

Farewell, my friends ; farewell, my foes I 
My peace with these, my love with those : 
The bursting tears my heart declare ; 
Adieu, my native banks of Ayr ! 

Light breaks suddenly in on him in floods ; but still a false 
transitory light, and no real sunshine. He is invited to Edin- 
burgh ; hastens thither with anticipating heart ; is welcomed 
as in a triumph, and with universal blandishment and accla- 
mation ; whatever is wisest, whatever is greatest or loveliest 
there, gathers round him, to gaze on his face, to show him 
honor, sympathy, affection. Burns's appearance among the 
sages and nobles of Edinburgh must be regarded as one of the 
most singular phenomena in modern Literature ; almost like 
the appearance of some Napoleon among the crowned sover- 
eigns of modem Politics. For it is nowise as " a mockery 
king," set there by favor, transiently and for a purpose, that 
he will let himself be treated ; still less is he a mad Kienzi,^"* 
whose- sudden elevation turns his too weak head : but he 
stands there on his own basis ; cool, unastonished, holding his 
equal rank from Nature herself ; putting forth no claim 
which there is not strength in him, as well as about him, to 
vindicate. Mr. Lockhart has some forcible observations on 
this point : 

" It needs no effort of imagination," says he, "to conceive 
what the sensations of an isolated set of scholars (almost all 
either clergymen or professors) must have been in the pres- 
ence of this big-boned, black-browed, brawny stranger, with his 
great flashing eyes, who, having forced his way among them 
from the plow-tail at a single stride, manifested in the whole 

103. Burns had decided*^o emigrate to America. He says: "I had taken 
the last farewell of my few friends; my chest was on the road to Greenock; 
and I had composed the last song I should ever measure in Caledonia,—" The 
gloomy night is gathering fast,"— when a letter from Dr. Blacklock to a friend 
of mine overthrew all my schemes, by opening new prospects to my poetic 
ambition." Dr. Thomas Blacklock was a divine and poet in Edinburgh, to 
whom a copy of Burns's poems had been sent. 

104. Rienzi: An eloquent Homan tribune, who, becoming intoxicated with 
power, " degenerated," says Gibbon, " into the vices of a king," and was 
driven from the city by the people, and finally assassinated in 1354. 



mL\) 



J BURKS. 

■(}}■■ ■ 

strain of his bearing and conversation a most ttiorougli con- 
viction, that in the society of the most eminent men of his 
nation he was exactly where he was entitled to be ; hardly 
deigned to flatter them by exhibiting even an occasional symp- 
tom of being flattered by their notice ; by turns calmly meas- 
ured himself against the most cultivated understandings of 
his time in discussion ; overpowered the hon-mots of the 
most celebrated convivialists by broad floods of merriment, 
impregnated with all the burning life of genius ; astounded 
bosoms habitually enveloped in the thrice-piled folds of social 
reserve, by compelling them to tremble— nay, to tremble visi- 
bly— beneath the fearless touch of natural pathos ; and all 
this without indicating the smallest wiFiingness to be ranked 
among those professional ministers of excitement, who are 
content to be paid in money and smiles for doing what the 
spectators and auditors would be ashamed of doing in their 
own persons, even if they had the power of doing it ; and last, 
and probably worst of all, who was known to be in the habit 
of enlivening societies which they would have scorned to ap- 
proach, still more frequently than their own, with eloquence 
no less magnificent ; with wit, in all likelihood still more dar- 
ing ; often enough, as the superiors whom he fronted without 
alarm might have guessed from the beginning, and had ere 
long no occasion to guess, with wit pointed at themselves." 
I The farther we remove from this scene, the more singular 
'^will it seem to us : details of the exterior aspect of it are al- 
ready full of interest. Most readers recollect Mr. Walker's 
personal interviews with Burns as among the best passages of 
his Narrative : a time will come when this reminiscence of Sir 
Walter Scott's, slight though it is, will also be precious : 

"As for Burns," writes Sir Walter, " I may truly say, Vir- 
gilium mdi tantum.^"" I was a lad of fifteen in 1786-7, when 
he came first to Edinburgh, but had sense and feeling enough 
to be much interested in his poetry, and would have given the 
world to know him : but I had very little acquaintance with 
any hterary people, and still less with the gentry of the west 

105. Virgiliamviditantum: I have almost seen Virgil, 



BURN'S. 51 

country, the two sets that he most frequented. Mr. Thomas 
Grierson was at that time a clerk of my father's. He knew 
Burns, and promised to ask him to his lodgings to dinner ; but 
had no opportunity to keep his word ; otherwise I might have 
seen more of this distinguished man. As it was, I saw him 
one day at the late venerable Professor Ferguson's, where 
there were several gentlemen of literary reputation, among 
whom I remember the celebrated Mr. Dugald Stewart. Of 
course, we youngsters sat silent, looked and listened. The 
only thing I remember which was remarkable in Burns's man- 
ner, was the effect produced upon him by a print of Bunbury's, 
representing a soldier lying dead on the snow, his dog sitting 
in misery on one side,— on the other, his widow, with a child 
in her arms. These lines were written beneath : 

" ' Cold on Canadian hills, or Minden's plain, 
Perhaps that mother wept her soldier slain ; 
Bent o'er her babe, her eye dissolved in dew. 
The big drops mingling with the milk he drew, 
Gave the sad roresage of his future years, 
The child of misery baptized in tears.' 

" Burns seemed much affected by the print, or rather by the 
ideas which it suggested to his mind. He actually shed tears. 
He asked whose the lines were ; and it chanced that nobody 
but myself remembered that they occur in a half -forgotten 
poem of Langhorne's'"' called by the unpromising title of 
" The Justice of Peace." I whispered my information to a 
friend present ; he mentioned it to Burns, who rewarded me 
with a look and a word, which, though of mere civility, I then 
received and still recollect with very great pleasure. 

" His person was strong and robust ; his manners rustic, not 
clownish ; a sort of dignified plainness and simplicity, which 
received part of its effect perhaps from one's knowledge of his 
extraordinary talents. His features are represented in Mr. 
Nasmyth's picture :'" but to me it conveys the idea that they 
are diminished, as if seen in perspective. I think his counte- 



106. John I^anghorne (1735-1779): A forgotten English poet, chiefly known 
for his translation of Plutarch s Lives. , , ^,_ 

107. Mr. Nasmyth's picture: This portrait, pamted when the poet was 
about twenty-six years old, is the only authentic likeness of Burns. 



52 BURETS. 

nance was more massive than it looks in any of the portraits. 
I should have taken the poet, had I not known what he was, 
for a very sagacious country farmer of the old Scotch school, 
i.e., none of your modern agriculturists who keep laborers for 
their drudgery, but the doitce gudeman"'^ who held his own 
plow. There was a strong expression of sense and shrewd- 
ness in all his lineaments ; the eye alone, I think, indicated 
the poetical character and temperament. It was large, and 
of a dark cast, which glowed (I say literally glowed) when he 
spoke with feeling or interest. I never saw such another eye 
in a human head, though I have seen the most distinguished 
men of my time. His conversation expressed perfect self-con- 
fidence, without the slightest presumption. Among the men 
who were the most learned of their time and country, he ex- 
pressed himself with perfect firmness, but without the least 
intrusive forwardness; and 'when he differed in opinion, he 
did not hesitate to express it firmly, yet at the same time with 
modesty. , I do not remember any part of his conversation 
distinctly enough to be quoted ; nor did I ever see him again, 
except in the street, where he did not recognize me, as I could 
not expect he should. He was much caressed in Edinburgh : 
but (considering what literary emoluments have been since his 
day) the efforts made for his relief were extremely trifling. 

" I remember, on this occasion I mention, I thought Burns's 
acquaintance with English poetry was rather limited ; and also 
that, having twenty times the abilities of Allan Ramsay and 
of Ferguson, he talked of them with too much humility as his 
models : there was doubtless national predilection in his esti- 
mate. 

"This is' all I can tell you about Burns. I have only to 
add, that his dress corresponded with his manner. He was 
like a farmer dressed in his best to dine with the laird. I do 
not speak in malam parieiii,'"^ when I say, I never saw a man 
in company with his superiors in station or information more 
perfectly free from either the reality or the affectation of em- 
barrassment. I was told, but did not observe it, that his ad- 

108. Douce g^udeman: Sober goodman. 

109. In malam partem : In bad part, disparagingly. 



BURKS. 53 

dress to females was extremely deferential, and always with a 
turn either to the pathetic or humorous, which engaged their 
attention particularly. I have heard the late Duchess of Gor- 
don remark this.— I do not know anything I can add to these 
recollections of forty years since." 

The conduct of Burns under this dazzling blaze of favor; 
the calm, unaffected, manly manner in which he not only bore 
it, but estimated its value, has justly been regarded as the best 
proof that could be given of his real vigor and integrity of 
mind. A little natural vanity, some touches of hypocritical 
modesty, some glimmerings of affectation, at least some fear 
of being thought affected, we could have pardoned in almost 
any man ; but no such indication is to be traced here. In his 
unexampled situation the young peasant is not a moment per- 
plexed ; so many strange lights do not confuse him, do not 
lead him astray. Nevertheless, we cannot but perceive that 
this winter did him great and lasting injury. A somewhat 
clearer knowledge of men's affairs, scarcely of their characters, 
it did afford him ; but a sharper feeling of Fortune's unequal 
arrangements in their social destiny it also left with him. He 
had seen the gay and gorgeous arena, in which the powerful 
are born to play their parts ; nay had himself stood in the 
midst of it ; and he felt more bitterly than ever, that here he 
was but a looker-on, and had no part or lot in that splendid 
game. From this time a jealous indignant fear of social deg- 
radation takes possession of him ; and perverts, so far as 
aught could pervert, his private contentment, and his feelings 
towards his richer fellows. It was clear to Burns that he had 
talent enough to make a fortune, or a hundred fortunes, could 
he but have rightly willed this; it was clear also that he willed 
something far different, and therefore could not make one. 
Unhappy it was that he had not power to choose the one, and 
reject the other ; but must halt forever between two opinions, 
two objects ; making hampered advancement towards either. 
But so is it with many men : we " long for the merchandise, 
yet would fain keep the price ;" and so stand chaffering with 
Fate, in vexatious altercation, till the night come, and our 
fair is over ! 



54 BURNS. 

The Edinburgh Learned of that period were in general more 
noted for clearness of head than for warmth of heart : with 
the exception of the good old Blacklock, whose help was too 
ineffectual, scarcely one among them seems to have looked at 
Burns with any true sympathy, or indeed much otherwise than 
as at a highly curious thing. By the great also he is treated 
in the customary fashion; entertained at their tables and dis- 
missed: certain modica of pudding and praise are, from time, 
to time, gladly exchanged for the fascination of his presence ;. 
which exchange once effected, the bargain is finished, and 
each party goes his several way. At the end of this strange 
season, Burns gloomily sums up his gains and losses, and med- 
itates on the chaotic future. In money he is somewhat rich- 
er ; in fame and the show of happiness, infinitely richer ;, 
but in the substance of it, as poor as ever. Nay poorer ; 
for his heart is now maddened still more with the fever of 
worldly Ambition ; and through long years the disease will 
rack him with unprofitable sufferings, and weaken his strength 
for all true and nobler aims. 

What Burns was next to do or to avoid; how a man so cir- 
cumstanced was now to guide himself towards his true advan- 
tage, might at this point of time have been a question for the^ 
wisest. It was a question too, which apparently he was left, 
altogether to answer for himself: of his learned or rich patrons 
it had not struck any individual to turn a thought on this so 
trivial matter. "Without claiming for Burns the praise of per- 
fect sagacity, we must say, that his Excise and Farm scheme'^" 
does not seem to us a very unreasonable one ; that we should 
be at a loss, even now, to suggest one decidedly better. Cer- 
tain of his admirers have felt scandalized at his ever resolving 
to gauge; and would have had him lie at the pool, till the 
spirit of Patronage stirred the waters,"' that so, with one 
friendly plunge, all his sorrows might be healed. Unwise 
counselors ! They know not the manner of this spirit ; and 

110. Burns now rented the farm of EUisland. about five miles from Dum- 
fries, but depended more confidently upon his appointment as an Exc.re 

111 kitherto it had been the custom for literary men to obtam assistance 
or pairuiuige uom some wealthy or influential person, to whom theii' pubh- 



BURNS. 55 

how, in the lap of most golden dreams, a man might have hap- 
piness, were it not that in the interim he must die of hunger ! 
It reflects credit on the manliness and sound sense of Burns, 
that he felt so early on what ground he was standing ; and 
preferred self-help, on the humblest scale, to dependence and 
inaction, though with hope of far more splendid possibilities. 
But even these possibilities were not rejected in his scheme : 
he might expect, if it chanced that he had any friend, to rise, 
in no long period, into something even like opulence and leis- 
ure ; while again, if it chanced that he had no friend, he could 
still live in security ; and for the rest, he ' ' did not intend to 
borrow honor from any profession." We reckon that his plan 
was honest and well-calculated: all turned on the execution of 
it. Doubtless it failed; yet not, we believe, from any vice in- 
herent in itself. Nay, after all, it was no failure of external 
means, but of internal, that overtook Burns. His was no 
bankruptcy of the purse, but of the soul ; to his last day, he 
owed no man anything. 

Meanwhile he begins well : with two good and wise actions. 
His donation to his mother, munificent from a man whose in- 
come had lately been seven pounds a j^ear, was worthy of him, 
and not more than worthy. Generous also, and worthy of him, 
was the treatment of the woman whose life's welfare now de- 
pended on his pleasure. A friendly observer might have 
hoped serene days for him : his mind is on the true road to 
peace with itself : what clearness he still wants will be given 
as he proceeds; for the best teacher of duties, that still lie dim 
to us, is the Practice of those we see and have at hand. Had 
the "patrons of genius," who could give him nothing, but 
taken nothing from him, at least nothing more ! The wounds 
of his heart would have healed, vulgar ambition would have 
died away. Toil and Frugality would have been welcome, 
since Virtue dwelt with them; and Poetry would have shone 



cations would be dedicated. Burns scorned this method of gain. While in- 
scribing His " Cotter's Satui'day Night " to Robert Aiken, he says: 
"No mercenary bard his homage pays; 

With honest pride, 1 scorn each selfish end; 
My dearest meed, a friend's esteem and praise." 



56 BUKiq"s. 

through them as of old : and in her clear ethereal light, which 
was his own by birthright, he might have looked down on his 
earthly destiny, and all its obstructions, not with patience 
only, but with love. 

But the patrons of genius would not have it so. Picturesque 
tourists,"^ all manner of fashionable danglers after literature, 
and, far worse, all manner of convivial Maecenases,"^ hovered 
round him in his retreat ; and his good as well as his weak 
qualities secured them influence over him. He was flattered 
by their notice; and his warm social nature made it impossible 
for him to shake them off, and hold on his way apart from 
them. These men, as we believe, were proximately the means 
of his ruin. Not that they meant him any ill ; they only 
meant themselves a little good ; if he suffered harm, let him 
look to it ! But they wasted his precious time and his pre- 
cious talent; they disturbed his composure, broke down his 
returning habits of temperance and assiduous contented ex- 
ertion. Their pampering was baneful to him; their cruelty, 
which soon followed, was equally baneful. The old grudge 
against Fortune's inequality awoke with new bitterness in 
their neighborhood; and Burns had no retreat but to "the 
Rock of Independence," which is but an air-castle after all, 
that looks well at a distance, but will screen no one from real 
wind and wet. Flushed with irregular excitement, exasper- 
ated alternately by contempt of others, and contempt of him- 
self, Burns was no longer regaining his peace of mind, but 

112. Picturesque tourists : To these words Carlyle appends this note: 
" There is one Uttle sketch by certain ' EngUsh gentlemen ' of this class, 
which, though adopted in Currie's Narrative, and since then repeated in 
most others, we have all along felt an invincible disposition to regard as 
imaginary: 'On a rock that projected into the stream, they saw a man 
employed in angling, of a singular appearance. He had a cap made of 
fox-skin on his head, a loose gi-eatcoat fixed round him by a belt, from 
which depended an enormous Highland broad-sword. It was Burns.' 
Now, we rather think, it was not Burns. For, to say nothing of the fox- 
skin cap, the loose and quite Hibernian watchcoat with the belt, what are 
we to make of this 'enormous Highland broad-sword' depending from' 
him? More especially, as there is no word of parish constables on the out- 
look to see whether, as Denrus phrases it, he had an eye to his own midriff or 
that of the pubhc! Burns, or all men, had the least need, and the least ten- 
dency, to seek for distinction, either in his own eyes, or those of others, by 
such poor mummeries." 

113. Maecenas: A wealthy Roman nobleman, and patron of Virgil. Hor- 
ace, and other men of genius. His name has become proverbial for a liberal 
patron of letters. 



BURNS. 57 

fast losing it forever. There was a hollowness at the heart of 
his life, for his conscience did not now approve what he was 
doing. 

Amid the vapors of unwise enjoyment, of bootless remorse, 
and angry discontent with Fate, his true loadstar, a life of 
Poetry, with Poverty, nay with Famine if it must be so, was 
too often altogether hidden from his eyes. And yet he sailed 
a sea, where without some such loadstar there was no right 
steering. Meteors of French Politics rise before him, but 
these Avere not his stars. An accident this, which hastened, 
but did not originate, his worst distresses. In the mad con- 
tentions of that time, he comes in collision with certain official 
^Superiors ;'^* is wounded by them; cruelly lacerated, we should 
say, could a dead mechanical implement, in any case, be called 
cruel : and shrinks, in indignant pain, into deeper self -seclu- 
sion, into gloomier moodiness than ever. His life has now 
lost its unity: it is a life of fragments ;Ued with little aim, be- 
yond the melfincholy one of securing Its own continuance, — 
in fits of wild false joy when such offered, and of black de- 
spondency when they passed away. His character before the 
world begins to suffer: calumny is busy with him; for a mis- 
erable man makes more enemies than friends. Some faults 
he has fallen into, and a thousand misfortunes ; but deep 
criminality is what he stands accused of, and they that are 
not without sin cast the first stone at him ! "^ For is he not a 
well-wisher to the French Revolution, a Jacobin, "^ and there- 
fore in that one act guilty of all ? These accusations, political 
and moral, it has since appeared, were false enough : but the 
world hesitated little to credit them. Nay his convivial Miecc- 
nases themselves were not the last to do it. There is reason 
to believe that, in his later years, the Dumfries aristocracy 
had partly withdrawn themselves from Burns, as from a 
tainted person, no longer worthy of their acquaintance. That 

114. He warmly sympathized with the French revolutionists, and sent to 
the French Convention a present of some guns, which he had taken from a 
smuggling: brig, in the performance of his duties as Exciseman. This led the 
Board of Excise to order an inquiry into his political conduct. 

115. See Jolm viii. 7. 

116. Jacobin: The most violent party among the French revolutionists; 
so called from their place of meeting, the monastery of St. Jacques. 



58 BURN'S. 

painful class, stationed, in all i^rovincial cities, behind the out- 
most breastwork of Gentility, there to stand siege and do bat- 
tle against the intrusions of Grocerdom and Grazierdom, had 
actually seen dishonor in the society of Burns, and branded 
him with their veto ; had, as we vulgarly say, cut him ! We 
find one passage in this Work of Mr. Lockhart's, which will 
not out of our thoughts 1^) 

" A gentleman of that county, whose name I have already 
more than once had occasion to refer to, has often told me 
that he was seldom more grieved, than when riding into Dum- 
fries one fine summer evening about this time to attend a 
county ball, he saw Burns walking alone, on the shady side of 
the principal street of the town, while the opposite side was 
gay with successive groups of gentlemen and ladies, all drawn 
together for the festivities of the night, not one of whom ap- 
peared willing to recognize him. The horseman dismounted, 
and joined Burns, who on his proposing to cross the street 
said : ' Nay, nay, my young friend, that's all over now ; ' and 
quoted, after a pause, some verses of Lady Grizzel Baillie's 
pathetic ballad : 

" ' His bonnet stood ance fu' fair on his brow, 

His auld ane look'd better than mony ane's new ; 
But now he lets 't wear ony way it will hing, 
And casts himsell dowie upon the corn-bing. 

O, were we young as we ance hae been, 

We sud hae been gallopping down on yon green, 

And linking it ower the lily-white lea I 

And iverena my heart light, Iioad die.'' 

It was little in Burns's character to let his feelings on certain 
subjects escape in this fashion. He, immediately after reciting 
these verses, assumed the sprightliness of his most pleasing 
manner ; and taking his young friend home with him, enter- 
tained him very agreeably till the hour of the ball arrived." 

Alas ! when we think that Burns now sleeps " where bitter 
indignation can no longer lacerate his heart," "\and that most 
of those fair dames and frizzled gentlemen already lie at his 



117. The epitaph upon the grave of Dean Swift, Qomposed by himself-^ 
Ubi seeva indignatio cor ulterius lacerare nequit," 



BUEN^S. 59 

side, where the breastwork of gentility is quite thrown down, 
— who would not sigh over the thin delusions and foolish toys 
that divide heart from heart, and make man unmerciful to his 
brother ! 

It was not now to be hoped that the genius of Burns would 
ever reach maturity, or accomplish aught worthy of itself. His 
spirit was jarred in its melody ; not the soft breath of naturcd 
feeling, but the rude hand of Fate, was now sweeping over 
the strings. And yet what harmony was in him, what music- 
even in his discords ! How the wild tones had a charm for 
the simplest and the wisest ; and all men felt and knew that 
here also was one of the Gifted ! " If he entered an inn at 
midnight, after all the inmates were in bed, the news of his 
arrival circulated from the cellar to the garret ; and ere ten 
minutes had elapsed, the landlord and all his guests were 
assembled !" Some brief pure moments of poetic life w^ere yet 
appointed him, in the composition of his Songs. We can un- 
derstand how he grasped at this employment ; and how too, 
he spurned all other reward for it but what the labor itself 
brought him. For the soul of Burns, though scathed and 
marred, was yet living in its full moral strength, though 
sharply conscious of its errors and abasement : and here, in 
his destitution and degradation, was one act of seeming no- 
bleness and self-devotedness left even for him to perform. 
He felt too, that with all the "thoughtless follies" that had 
"laid him low," the world was unjust and cruel to him ; and 
he silently appealed to another and calmer time. Not as a 
hired soldier, but as a patriot, would he strive for the glory of 
his country : so he cast from him the poor sixpence a-day, 
and served zealously as a volunteer. "^ Let us not grudge him 
this last luxury of his existence ; let him not have appealed to 
us in vain ! The money was not necessary to him ; he strug- 
gled through without it : long since, these guineas would have 
been gone, and now the high-mindedness of refusing them 
will plead for him in all hearts forever. 

118. Perhaps to atone somewhat ,' or his political offenses. Burns enlisted 
in a corps of volunteers at Dumfries, and composed the spirited patriotic 
song " Does haughty Gaul invasion threat ?"" which became at once popular. 



60 BURNS. 

We are here arrived at the crisis of Burns's life ; for mat- 
ters had now taken such a shape witli him as could not long 
continue. If improvement was not to be looked for, Nature 
could only for a limited time maintain this dark and madden- 
ing warfare against the world and itself. We are not medi- 
cally informed whether any continuance of years was, at this 
period, probable for Burns ; whether his death is to be looked 
on as in some sense an accidental event, or only as the natural 
consequence of the long series of events that had preceded. 
The latter seems to be the likelier opinion ; and yet it is by no 
means a certain one. At all events, as we have said, some 
change could not be very distant. Three gates of deliverance, 
it seems to us, were open for Burns : clear poetical activity ; 
madness ; or death. The first, with longer life, was still pos- 
sible, though not probable ; for physical causes were beginning 
to be concerned in it : and yet Burns had an iron resolution ; 
could he but have seen and felt, that not only his highest 
glory, but his first duty, and the true medicine for all his woes, 
lay here. The second was still less probable ; for his mind 
was ever among the clearest and firmest. So the milder third 
gate was opened for him : and he passed, not softly yet 
speedily, into that still country, where the hail-storms and. fire- 
showers do not reach, and the heaviest-laden wayfarer at 
length lays down his load ! 

Contemplating this sad end of Burns, and how he sank un- 
aided by any real help, uncheered by any wise sympathy, gen- 
erous minds have sometimes figured to themselves, with a 
reproachful sorrow, that much might have been done for him; 
that by counsel, true affection and friendly ministrations, he 
might have been saved to himself and the world. We question 
whether there is not more tenderness of heart than soundness 
of judgment in these suggestions. It seems dubious to us 
whether the richest, wisest, most benevolent individual could 
have lent Burns any effectual help. ^^Counsel, which seldom 
profits any one, he did not need ; in his understanding, he 
knew the right from the wrong, as well perhaps as any man 
ever did ; but the persuasion, which would have availed him, 



BURNS. 61 

lies not so much in the head as in the heart, where no argu- 
ment or expostulation could have assisted much to implant it. 
As to money again, we do not believe that this was his essen- 
tial want ; or well see how any private man could, even pre- 
supposing Burns's consent, have bestowed on him an inde- 
pendent fortune, with much prospect of decisive advantage. 
It is a mortifying truth, that two men in any rank of society, 
could hardly- be found virtuous enough to give money, and to 
take it as a necessary gift, without injury to the moral entire- 
ncss of one or both. But so stands tho fact : Friendship, in 
the old heroic sense of that term, no longer exists ; except in 
the cases of kindred or other legal affinity, it is in reality no 
longer expected, or recognized as a virtue among men. A 
close observer of manners has pronounced "Patronage," that 
is, pecuniary or other economic furtherance, to be "twice 
cursed ; " cursing him that gives, and him that takes ! And 
thus, in regard to outward matters also, it has become the 
rule, as in regard to inward it always w^as and must be the 
rule, that no one shall look for effectual help to another ; but 
that each shall rest contented with what help he can afford 
himself. Such, we say, is the principle of modern Honor ; 
naturally enough growing out of that sentiment of Pride, 
which we inculcate and encourage as the basis of our whole 
social morahty. Many a poet has been poorer than Burns ; 
but no one w^as ever prouder : we may question whether, with- 
out great precautions, even a pension from Royalty would not 
have galled and encumbered, more than actually assisted him. 
Still less, therefore, are we disposed to join with another 
class of Burns's admirers, who accuse the higher ranks among 
us of having ruined Burns by their selfish neglect of him. We 
have already stated our doubts whether direct pecuniary help, 
had it been offered, would have been accepted, or could have 
proved very effectual. We shall readily admit, however, that 
much was to be done for Burns ; that many a poisoned arrow 
might have been warded from his bosom ; many an entangle- 
ment in his path cut asunder by the hand of the powerful ; 
and light and heat, shed on him from high places, would have 
made his humble atmosphere more genial; and the softest 



63 BURNS. 

heart then breathing might have hved and died with some 
fewer pangs. Nay, we shall grant farther, and for Burns it 
is granting much, that, with all his pride, he would have 
thanked, even with exaggerated gratitude, any one who had 
cordially befriended him : patronage, unless once cursed, 
needed not to have been twice so. At all events, the poor 
promotion he desired in his calling might have been granted : 
it was his own scheme, therefore likelier than any other to be 
of service. All this it might have been a luxury, nay it was 
a duty, for our nobility to have done. No part of all this, 
however, did any of them do ; or apparently attempt, or wish 
to do : so much is granted against them. But what then is 
the amount of their blame ? Simply that they were men of 
the world, and walked by the principles of such men ; that 
they treated Burns, as other nobles and other commoners had 
done other poets ; as the English did Shakspeare ; as King 
Charles and his Cavaliers did Butler, as King Philip and his 
Grandees did Cervantes."'* Do men gather grapes of thorns ; 
or shall we cut down our thorns for yielding only ^ fence and 
haws? How, indeed, could the " nobility and gentry of his 
native land " hold out any help to this " Scottish Bard, proud 
of his name and country " ? Were the nobility and gentry so 
much as able rightly to help themselves ? Had they not their 
game to preserve ; their borough interests to strengthen ; din- 
ners, therefore, of various kinds to eat and give ? Were their 
means more than adequate to all this business, or less than 
adequate ? Less than adequate, in general ; few of them in 
reality were richer than Burns ; many of them were poorer ; 
for sometimes they had to wring their supplies, as with thumb- 
screws, from the hard hand ; and, in their need of guineas, to 
forget their duty of mercy ; which Burns was never reduced 
to do. Let us pity and forgive them. The game they preserved 
and shot, the dinners they ate and gave, the borough interests 
they strengthened, the little Babylons they severally builded 



119 Cervantes (1547-161G) : A celebrated Spanish writer, author of " Don 
Quixote " He was wounded in the battle of Lepanto, and later was seized by 
an Algerine corsair and held for some years as a slave, and was several times 
lodged in prison on civil prosecutions. 



BUKKS. 63 

by the glory of their might, are all melted or melting back into 
the primeval Chaos, as man's merely selfish endeavors are 
fated to do : and here was an action, extending, in virtue of 
its worldly influence, we may say, through all time ; in virtue 
of its moral nature, beyond all time, being immortal as the 
Spirit of Goodness itself ; this action was offered them to do, 
and light was not given them to do ic. Let us pity and forgive 
them. But better than pity, let us go and do otherivise. Human 
suffering did not end with the life of Burns ; neither was the 
solemn mandate, " Love one another, bear one another's bur- 
dens," given to the rich only, but to all men. True, we shall 
find no Burns to relieve, to assuage by our aid or our pity ; but 
celestial natures, groaning under the fardels^'^" of a weary life, 
we shall still find ; and that wretchedness which Fate has 
rendered voiceless and tuneless is not the least wretched, but 
the most. 

Still, we do not think that the blame of Burns's failure lies 
chiefly with the world. The world, it seems to us, treated him 
with more rather than with less kindness than it usually shows 
to such men. It has ever, we fear, shown but small favor to 
its Teachers : hunger and nakedness, perils and revilings, the 
prison, the cross, the poison-chalice have, in most times and 
countries, been the market-price it has offered for Wisdom, the 
welcome with which it has greeted those who have come to 
enlighten and purify it. Homer and Socrates, ^^^ and the Chris- 
tian Apostles, belong to old days ; but the world's Martyrology 
was not completed with these. Roger Bacon^^^ and Galileo^^' 



120. Fardels : Literally, bundles or packs. Compare Hamlet, III. 1 : 

" Who would fardels bear, 
To grunt and sweat under a weary life," 

121. Socrates: The wisest philosopher of antiquity. He was condemned 
to drink the fatal hemlock, on the charge that he disbelieved the gods of his 
country and corrupted the Athenian youth with his teachings. 

122. Roger Kacoii (1214?-1292 ?) : An Enghsh monk, regai'dedas the great- 
est scholar of the 13th century. His " Opus Majus,"' an important contribu- 
tion to science, was condemned by the church, and the author confined ten 
years in prison. 

123. Galileo (1564-1642) : The illustrious Italian philosopher, and inventor of 
the telescope. For his advocacy of the Copernican theory of the earth's mo- 
tion, he was summoned before "the Inquisition at Rome, made to abjure his 
heresies, condemned to be imprisoned during the Pope's pleasure, and to re- 
cite once a week for three years the sevea penitential psalms. 



64 BURNS. 

languish in priestly dungeons ; Tasso^-* pines in the cell of a 
mad-house ; Camoens^" dies begging on the streets of Lisbon. 
So neglected, so "persecuted they the Prophets," ^^^ not in Ju- 
dea only, but in all places where men have been. We reckon 
that every poet of Burns's order is, or should be, a prophet and 
teacher to his age ; that he has no right to expect great kind- 
ness from it, but rather is bound to do it great kindness ; that 
Burns, in particular, experienced fully the usual proportion of 
the world's goodness ; and that the blame of his failure, as we 
liave said, lies not chiefly with the world. 

Where, then, does it lie ? We are forced to answer : With 
himself ; it is his inward, not his outward misfortunes that 
brhig him to the dust. Seldom, indeed, is it otherwise ; seldom 
is a life morally wrecked but the grand cause lies in some in- 
ternal mal-arrangement, some want less of good fortune than 
of good guidance. Nature fashions no creature without im- 
planting in it the strength needful for its action and duration ; 
least of all does she so neglect her masterpiece and darling, 
the poetic soul. Y Neither can we believe that it is in the power 
of any external circumstances utterly to ruin the mind of a man; 
nay if proper wisdom be given him, even so much as to affect 
its essential health and beauty. ," i The sternest sum-total of all 
worldly misfortunes is Death ; nothing more can lie in the cup 
of human woe : yet many men, in all ages, have triumphed 
over Death, and led it captive ; converting its physical victory 
into a moral victory for themselves, into a seal and immortal 
consecration for all that their past life had achievedJN^What has 
been done, may be done again : nay, it is but the degree and 
not the kind of such heroism that differs in different seasons ; 
for without some portion of this spirit, not of boisterous daring, 
but of silent fearlessness, of Self-denial in all its forms, no 
good man, in any scene or time, has ever attained to be good. 

124. Torquato Tasso (1544-1595) : A famous Italian epic poet, author of 
"Jerusalem Delivered." He was imprisoned by Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara, 
and by his orders treated as a madman. The cause is involved in mystery. 

125. Camoens (1524 ?-1579) : The most celebrated Portuguese poet, author 
of •' TheLusiad." a heroic poem in which, says Mme. de Stael, " The national 
glory of the Portuguese is illustrated under all the forms that imagination 
can devise." 

136. Matthew v. 12. 



BURNS. 65 

We have already stated the error of Burns ; and mourned 
over it, rather than blamed it. It was the want of unity in his 
purposes, of consistency in his aims ; the hapless attempt to 
mingle in friendly union the common spirit of the world with 
the spirit of poetry, which is of a far different and altogether 
irreconcilable nature. Burns was nothing wholly, and Burns 
could be nothing, no man formed as he was can be anything, 
by halves. The heart, not of a mere hot-blooded, popular 
Versemonger, or poetical Restaurateur,^^'' but of a true Poet 
and Singer, worthy of the old religious heroic times, had been 
given him : and he fell in an age, not of heroism and religion,, 
but of skepticism, selfishness and triviality, when true Nobleness. 
was little understood, and its place supplied by a hollow, dis- 
social, altogether barren and unfruitful principle of Pride. The 
influences of that age, his open, kind, susceptible nature, to 
say nothing of his highly untoward situation, made it more 
than usually difficult for him to cast aside, or rightly subordi- 
nate ; the better spirit that was within him ever sternly de- 
manded its rights, its supremacy : he spent his life in endeav- 
oring to reconcile these two ; and lost it, as he must lose it, 
without reconciling them. 

Burns was born poor ; and born also to continue poor, for 
he would not endeavor to be otherwise : this it had been well 
could he have once for all admitted, and considered as finally 
settled. He was poor, truly ; but hundreds even of his own 
class and order of minds have been poorer, yet have suffered 
nothing deadly from it : nay, his own Father had a far sorer 
battle with ungrateful destiny than his was ; and he did not 
yield to it, but died courageously warring, and to all moral in- 
tents prevailing, against it. True, Burns had little means, had 
even little time for poetry, his only real pursuit and vocation ; 
but so much the more precious was what little he had. In all 
these external respects his case was hard ; but very far from 
the hardest. Poverty, incessant drudgery and much worse evils, 
it has often been the lot of Poets and wise men to strive with, 



127. Restaurateur : One who refreshes or restores. The keeper of a plac© 
of refreshment or amusement. 



66 BURNS. 

and their glory to conquer. Locke''^^ was banished as a traitor ; 
and wrote his Essay on the Human Understanding sheltering 
himself in a Dutch garret. Was Milton rich or at his ease when 
he composed Paradise Lost f Not only low, but fallen from a 
height ; not only poor, but impoverished; in darkness and with 
dangers compassed round, he sang his immortal song, and 
found fit audience, though few. ^"^^ Did not Cervantes finish his 
work, a maimed soldier and in prison ? Nay, was not the Arau- 
cana,^^° which Spain acknowledges as its Epic, written with- 
out even the aid of paper ; on scraps of leather, as the stout 
fighter and voyager snatched any moment from that wild war- 
fare ? 

And what, then, had these men, which Burns wanted? Two 
things ; both which, it seems to us, are indispensable for such 
men. They had a true, religious principle of morals ; "and a 
single, not a double aim in their activity. ' They were hot self- 
seekers and self- worshipers ; but seekers and worshipers of 
something far better than Self. 1 1 Not^personal enjoyment was 
their object ; but a high, heroic idea of Keligion, of Patriotism, 
of heavenly "Wisdom,, in one or the other form, ever hovered be- 
fore them ; in which cause they neither shrank from suffering, 
nor called on the earth to witness it as something wonderful ; 
but patiently endured, counting it blessedness enough so to 
spend and be spent. " Thus the ' ' golden-calf of Self-love, " how- 
ever curiously carved, was not their Deity ; but the Invisible 
Goodness, which alone is man's reasonable service. This feel- 
ing was as a celestial fountain, whose streams refreshed into 
gladness and beauty all the provinces of their otherwise too 
desolate existence. In a word, they willed one thing, to which 

128. John Locke (1632-1704) : A celebrated English philosopher. Beiu^ 
intimately associated with Shaftesbury, the Lord Chancellor, who was 
charged with hig:h treason, he fled to Holland for safety, but returned upon 
the completion of the Revolution in 1689. 

129. See Paradise Lost, Bk. vii. 26-31: 

" On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues, 
In darkneiss, and with dangers compassed round, 
And solitude. . . . Still govern thou my song, 
Urania, and fit audience find, though few." 

130. Araiicana : An epic poem in thirty-seven cantos, by Alonso de Ercilla 
(1530?-1C00?) . It recounts the poet's adventures while engaged in tlic Spanish 
expedition against Arauco, in South America, and was written, he says, in 
the wilderness, where he fought, on scraps of paper and skins. 



BURNS. 67 

all other things were subordinated and made subservient ; and 
therefore they accomplished it. The wedge will rend rocks ; 
but its edge must be sharp and single : if it be double, the 
wedge is bruised in pieces and will rend nothing. 

Part of this superiority these men owed to their age ; in 
which heroism and devotedness were still practiced, or at least 
not yet disbelieved in : but much of it likewise they owed to 
tliemselves. With Burns, again, it was different.' His morality, 
in-tnost of its practical points, is that of a mere worldly man ; 
enjoyment, in a finer or coarser shape, is the only thing he longs 
and strives for. Ajioble instinct sometimes raises him above 
this ; but an instinct only, and acting only for moments. He 
has no Keligion ; in the shallow age, where his days were cast, 
Religion was not discriminated from the New and Old Light 
forms of Religion ; and was, with these, becoming obsolete in 
the minds of men. His heart, indeed, is alive witti a trembling 
adoration, but there is no temple in his understanding. He 
lives in darkness and in the shadow of doubt. His religion, at 
best, is an anxious wish; like that of Rabelais,''' "a great 
Perhaps." 

He loved Poetry warmly, and in his heart ; could he but 
have loved it purely, and with his whole undivided heart, it 
had been well. For Poetry, as Burns could have followed it, 
is but another form of Wisdom, of Religion ; is itself Wisdom 
and Religion. But this also was denied him. His poetry is a 
stray vagrant gleam, which will not be extinguished within 
him, yet rises not to be the true light of his path, but is often 
a wildfire that misleads him. It was not necessary for Burns 
to be rich, to be, or to seem, " independent ;" but it w;a5 nec- 
essary for him to be at one with his own heart ; to place what 
was highest in his nature highest also in his life ; "to seek 
within himself for that consistency and sequence, which ex- 
ternal events would forever refuse him." He was born a poet ; 
poetry was the celestial element of his being, and should have 
been the soul of his whole endeavors. Lifted into that serene 

131. Francois Rabelais (1490?-1553?) : A French satirist, whose Rreat 
work. "Gargantua and Pantagruel." assails all classes of society, but espe- 
cially the monks. Sometimes called the " comic Homer." 



G8 BURKS. 

ether, whither he had wings given him to mount, he would 
have needed no other elevation : poverty, neglect and all evil, 
save the desecration of himself and his Art, were a small 
matter to him ; the pride and the passions of the world lay far 
beneath his feet ; and he looked down alike on noble and slave, 
on prince and beggar, and all that wore the stamp of man, 
with clear recognition, with brotherly affection, with sympa- 
thy, with pity. \^ Nay, we question whether for his culture as 
a Poet poverty and much suffering for a season were not ab 
solutely advantageous.\\ Great men, in looking back over their 
lives, have testified to that effect. U " I would not for much," 
says Jean Paul, ^^^ " that I had been born richer." And yet 
Paul's birth was poor enough ; for, in another place, he adds : 
"The prisoner's allowance is bread and water; and I had 
often only the latter." '• But the gold that is refined in the 
hottest furnace comes out the purest ; or, as he has himself 
expressed it, " the canary-bird sings sweeter the longer it has 
been trained in a darkened cage. " j* 

A man like Burns might have divided his hours between 
poetry and virtuous industry ; industry which all true feeling 
sanctions, nay prescribes, and which has a beauty, for that 
cause, beyond the pomp of thrones : but to divide his hours 
between poetry and rich men's banquets was an ill-starred 
and inauspicious attempt. How could he be at ease at such 
banquets ? What had he to do there, mingling his music with 
the coarse roar of altogether earthly voices ; brightening the 
thick smoke of intoxication with fire lent him from heaven ? 
Was it his aim to enjoy life ? To-morrow he must go drudge 
as an Exciseman ! We wonder not that Burns became moody, 
indignant, and at times an offender against certain rules of 
society ; but rather that he did not grow utterly frantic, and 
run amuck against them all. How could a man, so falsely 
placed, by his own or others' fault, ever know contentment 
or peaceable diligence for an hour ? What he did, under such 



132 Jean Paul Friedrich Richter (1763-1825): A popular, witty, and 
wise German writer, usually called simply Jean Paul : Carlyle first intro- 
duced him to English readers in 1827, with an essay on his genius. Best 
known in English by his '* Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces." 



BURNS. G9 

perverse guidance, and what he forbore to do, alike fill us 
with astonishment at the natural strength and worth of his 
character. 

Doubtless there was a remedy for this perverseness ; but 
not in others ; only in himself ; least of all in simple increase 
of wealth and worldly "respectability." We hope we have 
now heard enough about the efficacy of wealth for poetry, and 
to make poets happy. Nay have we not seen .another instance 
of it in these very days ? Byron, a man of an endowment con- 
siderably less ethereal than that of Burns, is born in the rank 
not of a Scottish plowman, but of an English peer : the 
highest worldly honors, the fairest worldly career, are his by 
inheritance ; the richest harvest of fame he soon reaps, in an- 
other province, by his own hand. And what does all this 
avail him ? Is he happy, is he good, is he true ? Alas, he has 
a poet's soul, and strives towards the Infinite and the Eternal ; 
and soon feels that all this is but mounting to the house-top 
to reach the stars ! Like Burns, he is only a proud man ; 
might, like him, have " purchased a pocket-copy of Milton to 
study the character of Satan ;" for Satan also is Byron's 
grand exemplar, the hero of his poetry, and the model appar- 
ently of his conduct. As in Burns's case too, the celestial 
element will not mingle with the clay of earth ; both poet and 
man of the world he must not be ; vulgar Ambition will not 
live kindly with poetic Adoration ; he cannot serve God and 
Mammon. Byron, like Burns, is not happy ; nay he is the 
most wretched of all men. His life is falsely arranged : the 
fire that is in him is not a strong, still, central fire, warm- 
ing into beauty the products of a world ; but it is the mad 
fire of a volcano ; and now — we look sadly into the ashes of a 
crater, which ere long will fill itself with snow ! 

Byron and Burns were sent forth as missionaries to their 
generation, to teach it a higher Doctrine, a purer Truth ; 
they had a message to deliver, which left them no rest till it 
was accomplished ; in dim throes of pain, this divine behest 
lay smouldering within them ; for they knew not what it 
meant, and felt it only in mysterious anticipation, and they 
had to die without articulately uttering it. They are in the 



70 BUENS. 

camp of the Unconverted ; yet not as high messengers of 
rigorous though benignant truth, but as soft flattering singers, 
and in pleasant fellowship will they live there : they are first 
adulated, then persecuted ; they accomplish little for others ; 
they find no peace for themselves, but only death and the 
peace of the grave. We confess, it is not without a certain 
mournful awe that we view the fate of these noble souls, so 
richly gifted, yet ruined to so little purpose with all their gifts. 
It seems to us there is a stern moral taught in this piece of 
history, — twice told us in our own time ! Surely to men of 
like genius, if there be any such, it carries with it a lesson of 
deep impressive significance. Surely it would become such a 
man, furnished for the highest of all enterprises, that of being 
the Poet of his Age, to consider well what it is that he at- 
tempts, and in what spirit he attempts it. For the words of 
Milton are true in all times, and were never truer than in this : 
" He who would write heroic poems must make his whole life 
a heroic poem." If he cannot first so make his life, then let 
him hasten from this arena ; for neither its lofty glories, nor 
its fearful perils, are fit for him. Let him dwindle into a 
modish balladmonger ; let him worship and besing the idols 
of the time, and the time will not fail to reward him. If, 
indeed, he can endure to live in that capacity ! Byron and 
Burns could not live as idol-priests, but //the fire of their own 
hearts consumed them ;l/and better it was for them that they 
could not. For it is not in the favor of the great or of the 
small, but in a life of truth, and in the inexpugnable citadel of 
his own soul, that a Byron's or a Burns's strength must lie. 
Let the great stand aloof from him, or know how to reverence 
him. Beautiful is the union of wealth with favor and further- 
ance for literature ; like the costliest flower-jar enclosing the 
loveliest amaranth. Yet let not the relation be mistaken. A 
true poet is not one whom they can hire by money or flattery 
to be a minister of their pleasures, their writer of occasional 
verses, their purveyor of table-wit ; he cannot be their menial, 
he cannot even be their partisan. At the peril of both parties, 
let no such union be attempted ! Will a Courser of the Sun 
work softly in the harness of a Dray-liorse ? His hoofs are of. 



BURN'S. 71 

fire, and his path is through the heavens, bringing light to all 
lands ; will he lumber on mud highways, dragging ale for 
earthly appetites from door to door ? 

But we must stop short in these considerations, which would 
lead us to boundless lengths. //We had something to say on the 
public moral character of Burns ; but this also we must for- 
bear. / We are far from regarding him as guilty before the 
worl^, as guiltier than the average ; nay from doubting that 
he is less guilty than one of ten thousand. Tried at a tribunal 
far more rigid than that where the Plehiscita^^^ of common 
civic reputations are pronounced, he has seemed to us even 
there less worthy of blame than of pity and wonder. But the 
world is habitually unjust in its judgments of such men ; un- 
just on many grounds, of which this one may be stated as the 
substance : It decides, like a court of law, by dead statutes ; 
and not positively but negatively, less on w^hat is done right, 
than on what is or is not done wrong. Not the few inches of 
deflection from the mathematical orbit, which are so easily 
measured, but the ratio of these to the whole diameter, con- 
stitutes the real aberration. This orbit may be a planet's, its 
diameter the breadth of the solar system ; or it may be a city 
hippodrome ; nay the circle of a ginhorse, its diameter a score 
of feet or paces. But the inches of deflection only are meas- 
ured : and it is assumed that the diameter of the ginhorse, 
and that of the planet, will yield the same ratio when com- 
pared with them ! Here lies the root of many a blind, cruel 
condemnation of Burnses, Swifts, ^^* Rousseaus,^^^ which one 
never listens to with approval. Granted, the ship comes into 
harbor with shrouds and tackle damaged ; the pilot is blame- 
worthy ; he has not been all-wdse and all-powerful : but to 
know how blameworthy, tell us first whether his voyage has 

133. Pleblscita: Lat. pi. of plebiscitum ; plehs. people, and scituvi, de- 
cree. Hence a decision by the people, as opposed to one b}' the senate or 
ruling body. 

134. Jonathan Swift (1667-1745): Author of the famous "Gulliver's 
Travels," and the bitterest and strongest satirist in our literature. See 
note, p. 58. 

135. Jean Jacques Kousseau (1712-1778): A brilliant French writer, 
whose political and social speculations were widely influential and mis- 
chievous. His " Confessions" reveals a man in whom genius and wickedness 
were strangely mingled. 



72 BURNS. 

been round the Globe, or only to Kamsgate"^ and the Isle of 
Dogs.'" 

With our readers in general, with men of right feeling any- 
where, we are not required to plead for Burns. In pitying 
admiration he lies enshrined in all our hearts, in a far nobler 
mausoleum than that one of marble ; neither will his Works, 
even as they are, pass away from the memory of men. While 
the Shakspeares and Miltons roll on like mighty rivers through 
the country of Thought, bearing fleets of traflBckers and as- 
siduous pearl-fishers on their waves ; this little Valclusa"® 
Fountain will also arrest our eye : for this also is of Nature's 
own and most cunning workmanship, bursts from the depths 
of the earth, with a full gushing current, into the light of 
day ; and often will the traveler turn aside to drink of its 
clear waters, and muse among its rocks and pines ! 

136. Ramssrate : A seaport on the southeast coast of England. 

137. Isle of Dogs : A peninsula of the Thames, where formerly the King's 
hounds were kept, now occupied by the West India docks. 

1.38. Valclusa : A romantic valley near Avignon, where the Italian poet 
Petrarch secluded himself for several years. 



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